The Kings and Queens of London
by aragonite
Summary: A piece that had to be cut out of Moon-Cursers due to length, but can stand on its own. POV: 1890. New PC Cooper's first case with his late father's closest friend, G. Lestrade. Ties in all the pre-Canon stories up to You Buy Bones. There are hints and clues to THE FINAL PROBLEM and the SWORD FOR DEFENCE upcoming series.
1. Chapter 1

_Pearly Kings and Queens are amazing. I'm not sure London would be London without them, they are as much of the gestalt as the Tower Ravens. I chose to create a Pearly King that never existed to avoid the inevitable insult of writing about an existing one. _

* * *

Thad Cooper had worn his uniform for six months. He thought he was getting used to it.

He was the son of a slain officer. He _would_ get used to it.

The young man was a little bigger than his father but otherwise just the same. When he donned his uniform for the first time and stood before the mirror his mother cried. It wasn't just sadness, she assured him. It was just that seeing him made her think of too many things at once.

He thought he understood. His father's old coat still hung in the closet with the moth-balls and lavender. When he was a boy he would try to wear it but the weight of it sent him gasping to the floor every time, and his father would laugh, hard, in delight. He tried to put his feet into the gigantic boots; he couldn't even lift one foot.

But every year on his birthday, he tried again.

It got easier as he grew. One day the shoes began to close about his feet. Then his shoulders swelled within the coat. His fingers made it all the way through the length of the sleeves. The helmet still felt as though it were made of brick, but he could hold his head up and look around.

One day he was finally old enough to take his exams, and he did. His father's uniform still didn't fit him; he had his own uniform and it hung on the other side of the closet from his father's, their Church suits in between with his brother's.

He expected some sort of censure or attention for what he was, but it never quite happened. He was told on his first day that he was a man like any other, and he'd get no more nor less attention than the other men who were pulling an honest workman's wages. The grizzled-up old Sergeant in charge of his street training told him they were all the widowers and orphans and bereaved of London; all of them had lost fathers, sons and brothers to the Work. There would be no pampering or mollycoddling from himself or from anyone else in the Office.

For which Cooper was glad. He had a belly full of stories of his father and his mates—Big and bluff Bradstreet with his proud exhibit of moustaches; little Lestrade with the deadliest glare north, south and west of the Thames (legend had it he was working on the east); Gregson, who went to the same church as the Coopers and who feared nothing made of this world or the next, and had proved it time and time over. He vaguely knew these men, and grew up catching this story and that from the moments when their life-circles connected with his. That was all there was to it. They'd done their part and helped the family with Da's funeral and burial...they'd worn arm-bands in respect to his memory and somehow, just before they'd be forced into the street...Mum would find the money to keep going for another few weeks until her sewing wages came in. It wasn't just the police helping; the Costermongers watched out for their own and it satisfied Cooper to no end that his beats took him to his ancestral grounds at least four days out of his week.

They got by, bit by bit. His brother Gansler now ran a coffee stall within strolling distance of the Vic (and making the princely sum of 1/ a week). As long as his nightly customers didn't destroy the business in a fit of temper he stood to do well. Thad might not be making as much as Gansler, but he had the comfort of a pension upon retirement, and the pride of family tradition. He stood stiff and straight on his swearing-in day as they took his picture for the records, and signed his name fifty times upon endless papers.

And he walked.

He was on relief beats while the work-force recovered from the loss of manpower due to illness. This gave him precious little time to learn the ways of different parts of London. Not every man could do relief; he liked them. Of course he loved the Costermongers' areas, for they were his grandparents' race. They claimed to have known Henry Croft when he was a hungry orphan sweeping the streets. Cooper suspected this was true, for most Costers sold perishables. Granny Grice and her husband "Grandy" had an _very_ nice side-business selling smoke pearly buttons with the extra service of on-spot threading. Pearl buttons helped the Costers identify each other, and they must have a thousand different codes in their styles and how they wore them. Among the Costers a person might suddenly need that bit of _something_ for a special occasion. Buy a button and let them sew it right on for you—in the forty years the Grice plied their trade, they must have sold enough buttons to mosaic Trafalgar Square. Keeping true to their ancestry, they also sold whatever struck their fancy in summer, but from winter to March they sold the namesake of their profession, the costard apple.

Cooper believed one would have to look long and hard with a field glasses to find an unsightlier apple. It was a lop-sided and ribbed teardrop fruit. Its venomous gray-green skin blushed on the sun-side like an Irishman's cheek too long under daylight. For all its cosmetic flaws its flesh remained white and true throughout the winter and it forgive a cook's errors. And true to a Costermonger's profession, the fruit was _cheap_. The poor bought them in droves and swiftly, knowing the city disliked salesmen cheeky enough to ply their trade after the evening bells—for the day ended not with the bells, but when the last of the wares were sold.

Cooper had grown under the Grices while his widowed mother worked. He swept streets for valuables like Henry Croft, and like Croft, collected any cast-off buttons, bits and bobs he could find. His grandfather sold them again before the day was out, and often to the original owners. He'd dash about with the other Arabs as soon as he turned six, hawking cresses. Granny Grice taught him to find dandelions hiding in the park and he sold them as fresh greens. He and his mates went where they could, sold what wasn't pinned down, and stole what they could carry for times were hard. Theft was a way of life for the people; theft meant life. And if they had to steal to live...they stole. They left one less chestnut out of the bag; they put a few minnows in with the basket of fish. They pinched the flour or they tricked the weights (and tricking the weights was the most common theft of all).

It was because of the latter that Cooper was certain to carry his own tiny scale and weights in his belt-pouch. He never knew when he would come across _another_ on-the-spot "debate" about light sacks or heavy leads and just the sight of him pulling out the machine was a guarantee of a hasty peace between both parties. If he didn't perform this small, voluntary act of public duty the quarrel would invariably turn to blows with the victor being the one who drew first blood. Cooper owed Gansler for the idea and was grateful for the continual peace it gave the restless streets.

Thad and Gansler were lucky; they didn't miss _too_ many meals and their parents _and_ grandparents had married in chapel and actually went to chapel when they had time. Families without marriage and children out of wedlock were common but they were all treated the same on the streets.

And just because they might steal from someone, didn't mean they didn't wish them well. The way they all threw in their help for the needy proved that.

Cooper turned his head just in time to catch a familiar glitter in the overcast world. It was tall and lean, clad in the blackest of black tuxedos and a stovepipe hat that dipped and bobbed as the head beneath the hat wobbled and peered back and forth and left and right. A glorious green neckerchief hung about a scarecrow throat, fastened with an elaborate knot to do a Chinese puzzle-maker proud.

The old man was hard to miss for the same way it would be hard to miss a ship sailing down the middle of a dry street. And that was before he sewed what he claimed were seven hundred and seventy-seven tiny pearl buttons upon his hat, coat, trousers, cummerbund, top hat and even his black leather shoes.

Cooper felt a grin rising to his face and it was with a life's worth of discipline that he kept it from showing. He did permit his weary spine to snap upright and he squared his shoulders within his coat and clicked his boot-heels together.

"Wellllllll, Mis-ter Cooper! Shall we sit and talk?"

"I'd be honoured, sir." Cooper tapped his brim respectfully. It would not be polite if he answered back in the street rhyme—best they all keep to the fiction that he didn't know the language. To the casual eye, the King was commanding one of the hated Constables.

And the King beamed brightly, flourished with his bejewelled sleeves, and together they went to the Pub chosen by His Highness: a neat little billiards-hall that swore to its keep of the most bitter of bitters in three countries.

* * *

Cooper had his own oasis when off-duty. It was a clean little place within five minutes of the Barracks: The Oil of Barley.1 But it was the corner of the police and hardly a fit place for a King to hold counsel.

On the same token, the King could hardly take him to his court. A Coster's preferred establishment would be full of illegal activities, from dog-fighting, drawing blood, fencing, card-marking, games with loaded tatts and (naturally) watering drinks and weighing the scales. The field of compromise demanded they meet in that questionable address, _**"Staggering Bob."**_

The name had nothing to do with drink. A staggering Bob was a new calf unable to stand, invariably eaten to offset the loss to the herd. As veal didn't get any younger, it was a popular dish of the house.

The King took a darkened corner with his penitent, and together they sipped their bitters. Cooper knew the business would open as soon as the last drop of the first round was drained.

"_There_ you are." The King grinned easily, lifting a sleeve heavy with tiny round buttons. Each Royal had their own distinct pattern and style, sewn by the King himself for his Queen and their Princes and Princesses. This King preferred vines and leaves and made the young copper think of a Pearly Green Man. "Never did get our thanks for your help last month, Constable."

Cooper shrugged easily. "Just doing my duty, sir." Long ago he'd see the wisdom in referring to the Pearly Royalty as though they really were royalty—they took their responsibilities far more seriously than many Royals inside Buckingham. "And really, I wish I could have done more." There were scores of Cockneys—that didn't mean one could just up and vanish without someone paying attention somewhere. Cooper had taken the full report, interviewed the people closest, and personally gone to all the surrounding stations, but the girl had already found herself a quick end in the Thames. Cooper had helped the closest neighbors identify the remains.

"Ey, you did your duty, as a Bottle and a Grice's gran'son."

"May I help you with anything else, sir?"

"Well, now, you might," The King allowed with a purse of lips. "You might, young fellow. There's a bit of a problem with the Gipsies." (Cooper wondered what problem _that_ could be—the Gipsies were all to a man camped out by the canals, and the nearest canal was hardly near the King's lands.) The King read his expression correctly. "It's a _charitable_ concern, don't you see." He enunciated carefully.

"Of course, sir." Cooper agreed. "I'd be pleased to help." And even if he wasn't, Cooper would have cut out his own tongue before saying so. The Pearlies had helped his family stay out of Starvation Row; getting help from the Costers wasn't the same as getting a hand-out at a kip or dive. It was Coster money, freely given by their work to those who needed a bit of help. Even Big-Bellied Joe, who beat his wife every damned fortnight, wouldn't think twice about giving up twopence of his brandy budget to help a mother trying to feed her children.

The King grinned. "Good lad. Then I'll tell you."

And he did.

* * *

Cooper worked too hard to have the luxury of insomnia. Restlessness came the morning after at the canteen as he poked through a bowl of something that was probably a decent breakfast. His mind just wasn't on eating his one reliable meal of the day.

The barracks were as cramped as a dove-cote and just as noisy if much cleaner. The bachelors possessed little and what they did have was stamped with their names to prevent the inevitable petty theft (yes, it happened amongst the police too...at least until the guilty were caught and thumped). He was still a good thirty minutes from his duty-shift and that gave him time to address the burden of his new duty.

Station-master Grigsby was an hardy old islander from the unspeakable frozen sea off the east coast of Scotland. He didn't have shoes until his feet stopped growing, and for most of his life a 'window' was a sheet of pig's intestines, stretched thin to let through the light. In other words, he was as tough as he looked (which was tough indeed), and practical. If something worked, he didn't concern himself with details or if people laughed because it wasn't in style. He'd tell you to the penny how much his father saved in not buying him twenty pairs of shoes, or point out that no-one had ever been killed or maimed by the shards off a gut window.

He was going through his one life's indulgence, the newspaper, and judging from the scowl knitting the yarn of his bushy brows in the middle of his furrowed brow...was having a thrilling read. He glanced up as Cooper's shadow darkened the doorway.

"Bloody hell." Grigsby pronounced (accused). "You've got a problem, don't you."

"I was given a problem, sir." Cooper offered blandly. "But as it's like no other problem I've yet seen, I thought I should ask you what I should do."

"Did you write a report?" This collection of five words, strung together in this precise order, was the necklace upon which Grigsby hung his glory.

"I did, sir. The matter itself is out of our jurisdiction even if the matter was reported within't."

Grigsby rolled his eyes at the annoyance of matters that were so discourteous as to pronounce themselves in another department. "It's out of our hands if it happened on the other side of the border, you know that." A fishbelly pale hand shot out from the fence of newsprint. "Well? Give it here!"

Cooper hastily obeyed. Grigsby's gooseberry eyes2 flitted and flickered with the speed of a telegraph over the terse paper (Grigsby liked his reports terse and his men, terser).

After a long minute of thought, the old fellow made a harrumphing sound. "Your relief beat is Baker's today." He announced. "Go do two turns; Jacobs will replace you at the end. Go see Lestrade, Division A after. That's _his_ area." Grigsby all but spat the last words out, implying a bad taste.

"Sir?" Cooper was startled, and hastily retreated at the glower aimed his way. Grigsby was already hoisting his newspaper for a final read. "Yes, sir. Right away sir."

He fled.

* * *

An early spring squall made a tin roof of his helmet halfway through his two-turn shift. _Plink-pink; plink-pink._ The water tried to soak through his shrunken woollen coat—Cooper sourly wished the weather luck. Under the skin of cold weather his blood boiled from futile rage at his orders.

Grigsby knew about Lestrade's history with the Coopers, he thought bitterly as he paused to halt the traffic at another intersection: Grigsby _had_ to know. Those officers talked amongst each other; and they talked about each other. They probably knew more gossip than a bevy of Temperance Quilters.

Not that he resented Lestrade at all—if the idea had ever entered his head it had died a quick death. His Mum would have seen to it.

Uncle Geoffrey had taught the boys how to 'cheat' their shoelaces, and reminded their Da to bring home whatever Mum needed for the stewpot. His eyes had gleamed and glittered strangely in the light—the only brown-eyed man in a room of blues, and Da had joked about it with him, laughed with him, evening after evening as they crowded around their tiny room by the stove. Cooper remembered the laughter most of all for the two men seemed full to bursting with jokes and humour.

Lestrade had tried to help them when their father was killed in the line of duty, but there is only so much a young bachelor can do for his late friend. As small boys Thad and Gansler had been hurt and confused as Uncle Geoffrey stopped coming by. Not only had they lost their father, but they had lost a family friend too—one of the few outsiders that didn't mind they were copper's sons. They missed the warmth of the tiny rooms with five of them all together, telling stories about their day and moaning about endless grey days in the city.

But in that close-knit warmth the boys had not known there was another problem that had nothing to do with either man and everything to do with their borough.

Bad enough his Mum had gone heretic and married a copper—a species hated amongst the Cockneys with the fervency of a terrier against a rat. Policemen weren't even human. Killing or maiming one for life was grounds for free drinks and eternal bragging even if it mean time in gaol. And here she'd gone and married one in church, the same church that promised them hellfire eternal if they broke the Ten Commandments. Well, stealing kept them alive and kept their children alive. Hang the Church and hang the institutions it supported. The Cockney would live how they could, and if they were stingy or generous it was because it was their _choice_, not because they feared _rules_. The police grudgingly agreed with this reasoning, pointing out that valor in battle was fiction to the higher classes, but simple every day courage to the Cockney. There was no braver race within the city.

Thad Cooper had known his Mum was beautiful—she _was_ his mother. But it hadn't occurred to him that his opinion was shared in an ugly way by people outside the family. "Not wasting any time," was a strange comment in their building and on the street, and Cooper grew to hate the way it turned his Mum's face pale and grey, how she froze up like a rabbit that didn't know which way to run. Then the children of those tongues took it as their duty to explain the meaning of that phrase, and the boys returned the verbal courtesy with the sort of manners that are much louder than words.

Uncle Geoffrey came by one evening before the bells and took one look at Thad. Without a word he took the boy to the public pump. The bells marked a rough curfew, but the 'mongers were out as long as there was something to sell, and Mum was still out with Gansler. It was just the two of them. He soaked his handkerchief in the flow, and showed Thad how to stop his nosebleed, even a bad one, if he put the icy cloth on the back of his neck and tilted his head up. He waited for the boy to stop sniffing and spitting out blood before he spoke to him for the last time. It was better, he said quietly, that he back away. He'd watch things from a distance, and he'd come if he was called, but it would be better for the sake of his Mamm if he stepped back and let...better people...see to them.

Thad listened to the quiet words over the roar in his aching head and stared at the only thing he could see: a brass button on PC Lestrade's sleeve. His organs shriveled dry and cold inside, until his belly glowed an icy coal of calm rage, and he agreed to call on him if they needed help. They both knew he was lying. He never would.

And he never did.

But he became a policeman.

And his mother never remarried.

* * *

His beat finished, Cooper took the remnants of his strength to Whitehall. The paltry drizzle had unimpressed his coat, but his shoes had been free and generous with the atmosphere. He squelched miserably through the catastrophe of Scotland Yard, struggling like a fish upstream through an airless sea of stinking, sweating bodies and the indoor fume of living factories smoking out their own form of London Fog in the form of tobacco. It was just as terrible as he'd remembered. Bored desk sergeants wrote down applicants. Bored Inspectors told the public to wait their turn and at long last, wrote down frantic accounts with a desultory pen. It reminded Cooper why his people avoided coppers in the first place. Better to be a man in a small force, like his little Division Station. He longed for the icy streets as he moved deeper and deeper within the unwashed masses, from which steam emerged like a full day at the laundress'. People wept and wailed without cease and once in a while there was a shout of rage or a flurry of foul language to break up the monotony of the dulled chaos. He had to get through a knot of flower-sellers, all of them sporting some sort of open bruise or mark from their menfolk as they waited for their sister's release. Cooper didn't bother asking them to report the crimes against themselves. Their pride was too firm and they would just speak the praises of their brutes.

Lestrade's door was half-open, which might have been an emblem of his willingness to hold court. Cooper devoutly hoped so, and put his report in his free hand as he knocked.

"Enter."

Mr. Lestrade was just lifting his head up from his desk, hand wrapped around a pencil and another flattening a crumpled paper. Cooper had not seen him up clear in ages; he was an older version of the man in his memory. Still no beard nor adornment of chin, but-shockingly-he'd let his hair grow out of the sheep-shearing style of his youth. Cooper _almost_ smiled to see that Lestrade had permitted some expression of vanity in his hair; it was now fashionably longer, oiled and combed neatly back.

His mother had once told "Uncle Geoffrey" that his hair was too fine of a sable to be treated so cruelly. He'd sworn back to her that he would never let his hair grow longer than a half-inch; he couldn't be bothered with a gentleman's fine mane. Well, they all changed.

"Inspector Lestrade, sir? Police Constable Coop-"

Lestrade was already nodding, his dark eyes glittering. Cooper hadn't dis-remembered that eerie light. "It's good to see you, Constable." If the words came out a bit slower than they should, they were clear and not choked-up.

"Begging your pardon, sir." Cooper tapped his brim politely. "But I was directed to come here and deliver a report I took off my section."

"Cheapside? You're still patrolling the spare beats?" Lestrade absently dropped the shocking news that he'd been watching Cooper's career and reached with his left hand. Cooper obediently produced his report, safely sealed in a waxpaper envelope. "Sit you down, Constable. Tea's to your left."

Cooper turned his head to find mortal manna in the form of a small teapot steaming from its trip off the stove. He poured a cup with chilled fingers and let the heat sink through the skin as Lestrade read through.

"In this modern day and age, Constable, I thought we'd left the notion that Gipsies stole children." The little man (when did Cooper grow to almost twice his size?) was heavy with disgust.

Cooper hastily swallowed before replying. "It wasn't the impression I had from the King, sir, but he was trying to report only what he'd seen with his own two eyes and nothing else...before someone else did it for him."

"Hmn. Wise of him." Lestrade reached up and rubbed at his jaw. "What do you think of this?"

Cooper swallowed without tea. "The King is good man, sir." Both of them knew why he wasn't being called an 'honest' man. "He wouldn't report something if he didn't see it personally, or if he didn't feel there was a cause of concern." _Because Cockneys never ask for help. _They both knew that.

"_Cockneys __**and**__ the Travellers in the same case_." Mr. Lestrade took a deep breath in wonder. "They are both the most jealous of London's jealous children." He rested the report on the sea of blotting-paper, where he could glance back down at the paper at any given time. "So he reports that one of his people saw a 'bevy of Gips' gadding about with a baby that looks, as you quoted, "not like a Gipsy" in their arms."

"Yes, sir."

"Your report did not say _how exactly_ the baby looked like it was "not a Gipsy," Constable."

Cooper flared red about his cheeks and throat. "I was afraid it would make an...inflammatory case if I did so. In case the newspapers read the report."

"Inflammatory." Mr. Lestrade repeated evenly. His face never changed expression, and Cooper hoped that meant he was used to the foolishness of young Constables using words found in dictionaries. "In what way, Constable Cooper?"

"He said the baby looked like it was well-born."

Mr. Lestrade paled under his sallow complexion.

In for a penny...Cooper took a deep breath and rattled the words off: "It was free of lice and grime, clean, had a full head of hair bright as a new penny, plump and white as ivory. 'E said it was as unlike a Gip as it could be."

Lestrade's waxy colouring was retreating before a new theatre of pigmentation. Cooper watched, fascinated as the little man's demeanour struggled for calm beneath a vivid mask of volcanic rage.

"_I see."_ The words were all but bitten out with teeth that looked extra-sharp and capable in the flickering white gaslight. "What do you think of the report itself?" He pressed.

"I think," Cooper answered slowly, "That he was right to report this concern before anyone else. Someone who might be less understanding...might see what he saw and jump to conclusions."

Lestrade almost smiled. Almost. "White as ivory with red hair...It _is_ peculiar to see a child of that description amongst a troupe of Gipsies or Tinkers." He leaned back in his wooden chair, abruptly dropping his expression to one of dark thought. "I suppose they could always claim their lineage to King James."

"Sir?"

"There's half a hundred Gipsies—Irish Tinkers _and_ Roman Gipsies—who carry blue eyes and gingery hair. Comes from Fat James' tastes for commoners, so they say." Lestrade tapped his fingers on his desk carefully. He snorted as if to himself, and caught that Cooper was gaping. "Drink your tea, Constable."

Cooper made haste to comply.

"For that matter, you'd best drink the whole pot." Lestrade said after another moment's thought. "You're coming with me, and we're going to be out in the wet. Do you have spare shoes?"

"Sir? No, sir."

"Finish that, and get to Supplies." Lestrade wrote something down in a loose shorthand and finished with a signature that was as clear as his message was not. "You'll need boots for mucking about. Make sure you get them slightly larger than you're used to you'll need two pairs of dry socks in there too; tell Jones I said to imagine you're heading to the soggy bits of the Black Country."

"Ah...yes, sir..." Cooper stammered, rising to take the paper.

"Finish that tea first, Constable." Lestrade reminded him. "We'll pick up a canteen of broth on the way out the door." Lestrade was tapping his fingers in an odd little rhythm. "You'll be going with me to the Tinker camp and take their version of the story. If all goes well that's all we need to do. Return the report and give you license to spread the summary to the public." Lestrade's lean, sallow face turned knowing and...sly. "That is why you were given the concern in the first place, isn't it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir."

Lestrade made a whispery sort of chuckle. "All right. If the case concludes properly, we'll send you back to the barracks before Grigsby starts yelling." Lestrade sniffed. "The bellowing old grampus."

Cooper hoped his delight would not show. "Yes, sir."

"He'll yell at me more than you, Constable." Lestrade pointed out dryly. "And if that wasn't bad enough, its the way he looks at you. Eyes like boiled gooseberries, that one." Cooper narrowly missed an ignominious end by strangling on his tea. "Right." That quickly, the humour vanished off the map of the Inspector's face. Lestrade rose and was out the door before Cooper could finish his latest breath.

_This_, he thought, _might be a bit more of a bother than hoped._

Jones took the slip of paper, frowned and turned it in different directions until he could at least pretend to read Lestrade's joined-up letters, and produced proofed boots more typical of the Water Police. There were no available dry stockings; Jones blamed it on the season, gave him foot-wrappings, and was pleased that Cooper knew how to do up his feet properly. "Most people think they do when they dunna," he explained. "Or they don't know how to wrap 'em up for a day's march. Then the blisters start a-bleeding."

Cooper was just batting a blot of dried mud off his coat when Mr. Lestrade came to pick him up. The little man had changed into clothing for the open air of the country: dustcoat, a heavier hat, and boots much like Cooper's. Cooper followed just behind him and to his right side back through the smelly, steaming throng.

* * *

"_Great Cesar's Ghost!"_

Lestrade stopped so quickly Cooper nearly ran right into him. Two Inspectors were standing side by side by a mountain of opened files, eyes round with shock.

Lestrade sighed. "Forgive me my manners," he said in a tone of voice that promised death and ruin on anyone who felt obligated to frivolity. "Police Constable Thaddeus Cooper, meet Inspectors Bradstreet and Gregson. They knew your father." He paused. "Gregson's the one with fat hands, and Bradstreet's the one with the girl's moustache."

"They're not fat, they're square." Gregson growled as he recovered some of his composure. Being insulted could do that to a man.

"And how can I have a _girl's_ moustache?" Bradstreet demanded as he reached up to touch his finely curling appendages (Cooper did think that was a reasonable question).

"You're talking to someone who goes to the _Chapel of the Virgo Fortis,_ Bradstreet." Gregson said crossly. "Those Catholics think anything is possible."

"I'm not a Catholic." Lestrade said—wearily, Cooper thought.

"Yes, you are. You're just the worst Catholic in London." Gregson corrected helpfully.

Bradstreet had recovered. He slowly stepped up to the increasingly uncomfortable Cooper. "I'm sorry to react like that, Constable." He said quietly. He looked the young man up and down. "You look like your father...For a minute there it looked like he was there, trying to keep up with Lestrade, as usual."

"I-it's understandable sir." Cooper cleared his throat. "I'm a little slow to move."

"Just like him. Even _sounds_ like him." Gregson marvelled. Cooper understood by reputation that Gregson did not startle easily and impressed never.

"Well since you're both here blocking up the natural flow of indoor traffic..." Lestrade snapped at them, and bobbed up on the balls of his feet, "did you get my note?"

"No, we didn't."

"I'm looking for any word on a missing child amongst the...the aristocrats. Infant, possibly a girl, gingery hair, white skin. The eyes are still blue."

"_Good Lord, no,_ we would have heard about it!" Bradstreet protested.

Gregson's entire face collapsed inward into one of the most impressive glowers Cooper had ever seen—even Grigsby couldn't touch it. "Nothing in the Upper Echelons that I know of. Well, other than Jones wrestling with another job off Coburg. A maid ran off with her master's possessions."

"Huh. Jones is on Coburg Square again?" Lestrade blinked.

"I suppose he can't stay away...even if a dismissed maid is a step down from the bank job last October!" Bradstreet said with a smile. "What a brew!"

"Would've gone better if the toffee-nosed _bourgeois_ bastard hadn't walked out of Newgate's noose." Gregson said uncharitably. "_**The City and Suburban Bank**_ is _still_ screaming "murder most foul!" and they aren't using the Bard's English either!"

"When are you going to stop acting as though every case that goes wrong directly affects _your_ reputation?" Lestrade wanted to know, hands on his hips. Up against the much-larger Gregson he was a small terrier standing up to a brutish mastiff.

"When it's a fact." Gregson answered in cutting tones. "_You_ may be happy with your rank, but some of us feel like promoting."

"And you're on a case of a missing babe?" Bradstreet bodily put himself between the two antagonists. "What is it—family, friend, or enemy?"

"The report says Gipsies." Lestrade shot back.

"In other words, Tinkers." Bradstreet shook his head. "Do give our love."

"I'll do just precisely that." Lestrade scathed. "Come on Cooper; we're running out of daylight and they _hate_ night-time visitors."

* * *

1Street-slang for a very strong drink.

2Dull grey


	2. The Tinker King of Quag

Mr. Lestrade detoured into the market just long enough to buy up a canvas sack's worth of cheese and salt bacon. He also stopped to speak briefly to PC Bishop. Cooper didn't catch all of the conversation over the every day racket and clatter of the streets, but he caught, _"not Dooley's people,"_ and _"never hurts to be prepared,"_ as a child's soprano canter for dried pears battled the rusted-out baritone of a black-bearded Goliath who bragged of the finest pigeons alive.

"_Ey, sir. Not much speakin' wi'em. They're related to Dooley's folk I'm sure, what with their flagrant mis-use of horseshoes..."_

Lestrade barked in sudden laughter—a sound that violently pushed Cooper into a past memory of the man with his father. But the laugh didn't carry on as he remembered; it was quickly stilled.

"_Right. Well not all of the Dooleys camp together. And he's got the Barlow Tribe and the Glassmaker's Tribe under his wing too. Married those circus sisters, I believe."_

"_**He'd** know." Bishop was flat with confidence. _

Cooper followed Lestrade's hand-wave but in the wake of the little man, the policeman wondered at the oddity of the conversation.

He didn't know much about the Gipsies. "Cockneys, Gipsies _and_ Thieves" made up East London—a neat if unhelpful phrasing. Cockneys were famous for possessing every skill known to Man and that included stealing; Gipsies were just another word for thievery. That left the Tinkers and they were some foggy field all their own. They were called Gipsies as much as they were called Tinkers or Tinklers or Travellers, or just any other word for vagabond. Poverty wasn't worth mentioning, but their rootlessness unsettled the other races of the street.

Lestrade had grabbed up a police growler. He made certain that plenty of eyes saw them both board and sent it down the road to the canals. "Something on your mind, Cooper?" He asked after they'd cleared the first mile out of the city limits.

Cooper jumped. "I was just wondering which canal we were headed't, sir."

"Grand Union, but it doesn't matter," Lestrade said surprisingly. "Tinkers'll be staying close to whatever bit of wood they can find—close but not too close to the canals. They've got too much respect for the narrowboat-folk that they'd trespass... I'm starting at the Quag off the Brent below the junction. Keep your eyes out for a caravan with blue horse-shoes painted on the sides, and a green roof. There may or may not be silky-footed draft horses pulling the caravans, but I guarantee you there will be bleedin' great wolfhounds half the size of those horses loping about." The little Inspector shuddered inside his coat. "Most of those are a grey colour and their coats are kept long."

Fighting dogs, in other words. Cooper felt glad of his wool coat and leather collar. Mr. Lestrade didn't have anything so nice, just a winter coat with half the weight of Cooper's uniform and a soft silk tie about his throat. Mr. Lestrade must have been thinking the same thing, for he unconsciously reached up and fingered the band below his Adam's Apple, as if imagining large and sharp teeth casting breath over his vulnerable flesh.

"How much do you know of the Tinkers?" Lestrade shifted the subject sideways and they were both glad.

"Not much, sir. The ones I know are on-job smiths; keep a tiny forge going and they'd pay the urchins decent wages to find and bring them back bits of copper or tin." Cooper had been one of those dirty-footed urchins once upon a time.

"Those are the Roman Gipsies. They _never_ speak their own tongue around outsiders unless you've made firm friends beforehand. The Tinkers are more Irish if we're to believe their own history. They live like the old-timers in Scotland; moving around from pasture to pasture, a different trade each season. The only difference is they move from country to country. France, south-west of England, central London, all the way up to the north-eastern ports and then back down again—unless they hop to the western side for a jaunt to Ireland but I think the patriarch was kicked out of Ireland so maybe they don't go there any more."

Cooper wondered what a man had to do to get kicked out of Ireland. It seemed to happen a lot.

"Dooley's a bit of a character," Lestrade clasped his fingers about his bent knee as he considered how much to tell the young man without filling up his brain. "He's Irish Tinker...mostly. He has ties by blood or marriage to every group of Nomads that ever laid claim to England. Narrowboats, Roman Gipsies, pedlars, you name it. He represents all of them in some way. There's just something about his people that can't settle. Not an easy life, not at all, but they make a living of it—what?"

A wooden ball went sailing past the small window. A moment later it was followed by a flurry of small heads shouting at the top of their small lungs.

"This may be the place." Mr. Lestrade rapped the top of the ceiling and the driver stopped.

* * *

Children swarmed around the growler like bees. Cooper couldn't imagine how many—they wouldn't hold still even for a moment. He had an impression of unevenly-cropped hair in every imaginable shade between yellow and brown, and the widely spaced, slanted eyes one often saw among the Irish.

"Hand on your wages, Constable," Lestrade cautioned. "This lot has tricks even Aldgate's never seen." With that alarming compliment, the little detective hopped out of the growler and strode forward through the beaten-down meadowgrasses. Cooper struggled to follow, bigger and ungainly. Lestrade was threading to a lean hazelwood coppice inside a low gate fashioned of smooth water-stones. Cooper saw water already filling in Lestrade's boot-prints and was grateful for his borrowed footwear.

A wolfhound stood at the gate, so tall it leaned its great head upon the top with an almost human expression. Lestrade hunched his shoulders forward and tried to ignore it. Cooper thought of his leather collar again.

The ground dried a bit but sloped to a wandering brook. At the top of the slope Cooper counted three caravans and two smokeless cookfires. A group of adult men were clubbing young, slashed oaken logs with heavy sticks; eventually the rings loosened they peeled off the splints. Several children sat at a folding table, industriously spinning splints into clever little baskets.

The caravans were rounded of body and very distinct in their paint. One matched Lestrade's directions. It was topped green with blues and reds; horse-shoes and clovers made the trim. It had one of the cook-fires. Cooper glanced into the depths of a suspended kettle on their way past and failed to recognise the animal bones in the bubbling broth. Whatever they were eating, it wasn't rat, bird, squirrel, or rabbit.

Cooper wasn't completely ignorant of Gipsies or Tinkers (he doubted Lestrade's assertation that they were different species), but this was the first camp in which no one paid him the least attention. Man, woman and child—even the giant dogs—carried about their business as if he wasn't there. No one ran for help, or shouted; no one even looked in their direction. Cooper was six-foot, four inches and not used to being ignored.

Then they entered some invisible line of territory and 'hallos' and 'how are you's' flew through the air.

* * *

"How are you, sir?"

"Very good, thank you, Mr. Corvin." Lestrade said to a blocky man in a slops-coat held together with patches and prayers and nothing else. "Came for a bit of business with the Patriarch, if he's in the mood."

"Not in the mood for business? That's daft talk, now!" Corvin and the men in earshot chuckled. "He's expectin' you, Inspector."

They sounded rehearsed and a little formal. Cooper suspected they changed their behaviors because of his presence. The Costers did the same around anyone they didn't know.

The Patriarch was inside the caravan; the men pulled off their head-wear as they entered (partly for manners and partly to fit in the tiny confines). Cooper could see a dry old man at the far end, perched behind a tiny table that converted to a bed-frame. His clothing was better than the rest and his buttons gleamed with silver coins of foreign lands.

"Business, is it?" Dark eyes twinkled merrily. The old fellow pulled off his soft cloth cap and let show his unruly grey thatch. A life under the sun had permanently browned him to a walnut shade and a leathery consistency. _"Yoordjeele's soonee-in munya. Lʹesk mwīlša a hu?"__3_

"I'm doing well, thank you." Lestrade handed over the food without explanation; the old man in turn passed it to a grey-haired woman in widow's weeds who appeared literally _out of nowhere_ and left with the prize as fast as she'd arrived. With a heft and a shuffle, the policemen were sitting at the table with their host—and not an inch of space to spare.

"You know how it is. We took a report that a child that didn't 'look like a Gipsy' was seen in the company of 'Gipsies.'" Lestrade changed the inflection of his speech as he entered the heart of the matter. "Children go missing every day, and efforts are taken, often on the side of caution." With just a tiny roll of the eye he held out a tin cigarette-case. Cooper thought wistfully of his own tobacco, but he was on duty.

Old Dooley nodded as he chose a thin cigar. He rolled it beneath his nose and breathed deeply. His eyes were clear of cataract and disease; his only infirmities were his lack of teeth and his age. "Well we ourselves hanna' lost any of our children recently, God be thanked," Dooley paused to make the sign of the Cross above his heart. "But we did bring in a child to the nest. A foundling. And we have papers." He added proudly.

Cooper desperately wished he could catch Lestrade's eye, because a copper heard surprising things every day, but that had to be one of the most surprising.

Dooley reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat envelope. The paper was finely made, firm and creamy. It was fat because it was full of pound sterling notes from _**Fox, Fowler and Company**_—a private bank out of Somerset. Cooper did his best not to stare at the most money he'd ever seen in his life.

The old man thumbed carefully through the heart of the money and found a neatly folded square of pale yellow stationary. With a smile and a flourish he handed the item to Lestrade.

Lestrade rested the paper in his lap and pulled off his gloves before picking it up. Holding the paper gently by the edges, he let the paper open, tilting so Cooper could read:

_**Who Finds this child**_

_**Take good care of her**_

"Very..._interesting_, Mr. Dooley." Mr. Lestrade cleared his throat twice. "I see the date's almost exactly a month from tomorrow. Is that the day the child came to you?"

"That is true."

"How did you come across the child?"

Dooley's expression was finally angry but not at his guests. "The usual way," he grunted. "Someone leaves a basket or a bundle outside the camp. Foolish, I tell you. What if we were the sort with dogs out of control? Or wandering pigs?" He shook his head as Cooper went white to his ears. "Foolish or desperate...I like to think they are desperate."

"They may very well be." Mr. Lestrade agreed. He peered at the paper closely. The hand-writing was excellent, each word spaced out just so. He counted out the notes slowly. They were all 5/ notes. Together it totalled to 75/. "They did leave you quite a bit of money to pay for the child's upkeep."

"Money we don't dare spend." Dooley said firmly. "How am I supposed to know 'tis truly for the child? What if this is stolen?"

"I beg your pardon?" Lestrade handed back the envelope but his brows were pressing his hairline up.

"She was wrapped in a common old laundry-basket—a cheaply made thing and an embarrassment to the craft but her swaddlings were very nice. She was hungry and crying; the dogs are trained to let us know when there's something amiss...Jander followed them to the stone gate where she'd been placed." He jerked a bearded chin in the somewhat-direction to the gate the policeman had crossed. "We found the note in the bottom of the basket after she was fed."

Lestrade folded his arms and leaned back, not that he had much space. "PC Cooper is a newcomer," he said casually. "Would you mind explaining how these things are done in your own words, Mr. Dooley?"

"Not at all." The Tinker had lit his cigar and was puffing a thick cloud of perfumed finery into the caravan; Cooper enjoyed each breath. "Outsiders bring us children, Constable. It doesn't happen so much as the stories would think, but a young girl gets in a bad way, or a young man discovers proof of his indiscretion—I feel the most for the mother or father who find themselves alone in the world with no one to help raise or love a babe." He shrugged. "But in a clean deal, they come to us in person with the child. They offer us money to raise it up as our own, and we usually agree for there's always someone with empty arms. The last twelve children born to the tribe, only nine grew to see five."

Cooper shivered at the matter-of-fact way the old man admitted to the losses.

"But it's when we find a child all by itself that makes us worry, and maybe it brings up the question of people who steal children." Dooley sniffed. "Someone might...disapprove of a marriage or arrangement, and take it upon themselves to remove the proof of their son's or their daughter's mistakes. We can't take chances, you see. Best be careful. If there's no doubt that it is a mother letting go of their little'un, then we set a price and they give the poor thing over. More often as not, they never see their child again."

"Just as well." Jander had come up to the Patriarch. He was smiling in a funny little way; a handsome fellow, well-sunned and healthy.

"Jander's one such foundling." Dooley told them. "Ten shillings to take him in. I always said, we had the better of the deal with a fine fellow like this!" He grinned and thumped the broad chest just above the waist-coat. Jander grinned back.

"I've never regretted the Free Life," the foundling assured him. "I have a good life, a good wife, a good trade and three children—now four-t'brag of!" He tapped his breast-bone, showing Cooper a tiny insignia that bespoke of the coveted guild of fine wood-carvers. Cooper was impressed.

"How many children have you've taken in?" Lestrade asked curiously.

Dooley looked at him curious in turn. "Must be up to twenty since the American's War. Not all of them stay with _us_, mind. One of the other families might be needin' a child to love. We've taken in a few of theirs. When a little one is old enough to decide what it wants to do, we don't hold them back. By the time they're six most of the boys want to be off on their own adventures, but I tell them na, not until you've got a few trades under your belts!"

"If we might see the child for ourselves?_-Maa'ths._4" Lestrade asked. The same woman had returned with a tiny tray of tea-cups filled and steaming. She placed a cup before each of the three seated men and again left without a word. Cooper said _"Maa'ths,"_ or his best attempt at it, and smelled the strength in the steam. He wondered if he was man enough for even one cup.

"Jander, would you mind asking the new mother?"

"I'll need to convince her we aren't taking her away." Jander paused to give the policemen a long look.

"I'm not here to collect children at this time, sir." Mr. Lestrade assured him evenly.

Jander nodded soberly, and left the caravan.

Cooper saw how the other men grew quiet with the gravity of the situation. Mr. Lestrade read the single sheet of paper over and over, but saw nothing new. The paper was expensive, a half-sheet torn from a larger foolscap.

"I don't know what to think, young man." The old patriarch said to Mr. Lestrade. "I never hold with paper money, and here it is." He shook his head and poked at the envelope. "How can you tell if it's genuine or not? What if it's a forgery?"

"The bulk of forged bank-notes are the £1 and £2 notes." Mr. Lestrade reminded him.

"That doesn't mean someone isn't feeling bold enough to make a fiver." Mr. Dooley sipped his tea with a disgruntled sigh.

"It would be very risky if so. Most of the forgers out there remember when it was the death penalty to copy bank-notes." Mr. Lestrade's face was grave as he looked at the paper money again and again.

"Even if it's real, I'd be simple-pated to keep it about. The only real money is gold and silver. Something you can take with you. Something that can survive a house-fire, or burial in the earth, or hiding in a tree or under water." Dooley was not convinced, and his logic was quite sound.

"Even coins can be forged." Lestrade smiled.

"But _those_ we know. I can spot a coiner before a raven can see a snail. This paper stuff..." Dooley sighed again. "At the least, I think it proves that someone cares about the child enough to give it a place. Real money or not I admire the effort."

"How many outsiders know you have this child, Mr. Dooley?"

"The doctor that examined her," the old man mused. "And whoever dropped her by the gate of course...I suppose someone might have seen her when we took her to the doctor?"

"It could be, or perhaps someone is watching you." Mr. Lestrade sipped at his tea. "A month in one spot is a bit long for you."

"We can keep to our trade in one spot for a bit...we decided it was a better idea to stay here in case..." He shrugged up one shoulder. "whoever brought her here might change their mind. And nothing makes a man look guilty more than not being around."

"That's true." Mr. Lestrade set his tea down and made a few notes with his little book and pencil. "Do please do me a favour and...send me a note the next time anything like this happens?" He tried not to sound as though he were pleading. Cooper thought he couldn't be half as calm if he were the luckless man in charge.

"We'll do that...even if we're in another country." Dooley promised him.

"Well...you don't really have to go that far..."

"It would be a good idea." The old fellow had latched on to the practicalities of the information with enthusiasm. "We probably wouldn't have to worry too much in France. No one's ever given us a foundling over _there_."

"Well, that's good." Mr. Lestrade agreed in a strained voice. He looked as relieved as Cooper felt as a step up caused the caravan to sway.

Jander was there with a woman about his age, nervously carrying a soundly sleeping bundle in her arms. "She's eating well." She said nervously to the Patriarch. "Took a full bottle of fresh milk, and then half of a second!"

"Goat's milk." Dooley beamed. "Best for a babe."

Mr. Lestrade took the sleepy infant in his arms. It still wore the heavy wrappings of its adoption-basket, including a laced white cap. Through it a tiny lock of penny-bright hair shone against a pale forehead. Large eyes opened, the deep blue common to most babies. The mouth was soft and thin-lipped. As young as it was one could see a tiny cleft in the chin. It stirred drowsily as it picked up the different smells and heft of being in a newcomer's arms.

"Well, there, aren't _you_ a pretty thing." Mr. Lestrade said softly. His careworn face was smoothing to a smile that looked...wistful. Babies had that effect on people. Either that, or the perfume of warmed milk that hung around them was soporific; Cooper's mum had sworn to it. A tiny hand groped through the air; he let it grip his finger and was satisfied at the strength. "Good weight. Not more'n two months, eh?"

"Ay. We looked about for a doctor to make sure, but they were all busy." The old Tinker held no bitterness to the prejudice against his race. "But good clean goat's milk with a drop of treacle is enough to make any babe happy, and it certainly did her! She ate till she fell asleep."

"Mr. Dooley, I'm sure you're doing the right thing, but I should ask...what if someone comes to you claiming to be the rightful guardians? What will you do?"

"Take them to the courts I suppose," was the shocking answer. "If we must part ways, we could at least get a promise that she'd have better family than what she had. She was _hungry_, poor thing!"

"Not even a bottle with her basket, or a rag of sugar!" Susan added to the list of crimes. "And don't forget she was left out there where something or someone could have just...found her."

"In the weather." Jander grumbled. "Fine weather for an infant!"

Lestrade was writing at lightning speed with one hand as the other cradled the tiny girl to his shoulder. "We can only hope they were desperate and not thinking properly, perhaps just not able to take care of her." He gnawed on his bottom lip. "If you don't mind my checking for any distinguishing marks?"

"By all means."

Cooper quickly removed the cups and saucers from the table; Jander removed his coat and used it as a blanket and Mr. Lestrade gently lowered the baby down. She yawned and struck the air with her fists before choosing one for a good gnawing. Her new mother gently took the fist away and gave her a twist of dried rawhide. This was accepted with single-minded enthusiasm.

Mr. Lestrade undressed the infant one limb at a time, covering it back up from the chance of a chill before moving to the next. A tiny coral anklet threaded around the little ankle. It was worth more than the baby's blanket.

"You do that well, Mr. Lestrade." Susan Dooley stared at him as though he was a strange beast.

The small man coloured under her scrutiny. "I've had to examine infants in the past, Mrs. Dooley." He coughed. "I'm looking for birth-marks, odd freckles or things that would make her stand out...things that couldn't be faked."

"Ah, well, then. She's got a mole on her shoulder there..." Susan bent over to point.

"Very good. Cooper, write that down..."

Cooper complied.

"And then there's her hair." Susan gently tugged off the cap. The child had been born with a healthy bit of glowing hair the tint of freshly forged copper, but just above the filigree left eyebrow was a small splash of pure white.

"Halloa, _that's_ unusual!" Mr. Lestrade was quite taken aback. "Striking! She had that when you first saw her?"

"Yes, and considering the weather was just beginning to sour into a fine storm, the children started calling her "Snowflake." Dooley sighed through his nose, mortified at the young of today.

"Corvin wanted to name her Blagdon because she was splashed like the horses!" Jander snorted.

"Do not remind me." Dooley half-groaned.

Lestrade shook his head but his lips were tight with the need to keep from laughing. "Right. I'll see what I can find out about the identity of the child, and that of her family."

"Can you?" Dooley was willing to be convinced even if it sounded impossible.

"It's the last private bank to issue notes in England and Wales." Lestrade thumbed the print to underscore his point. "They're well-known, but they're hardly larger than the _**Bank of England**_! And they keep track of their money."

"I thought they might." Dooley mused. "Is that why they are numbered?"

Dooley was of the rare ilk that felt the only foolish question was the unasked question. It made talking to him rather easy compared to other citizens of England.

"Yes, Mr. Dooley." Mr. Lestrade coughed lightly. "Rest assured, we can verify for you if the notes are genuine...or stolen."

"Thank you."

"What will you do with them in the meantime?"

"I can't say." Dooley shrugged wildly. "I don't really know much about paper money. It's so worthless. Keep it for now in a safe place, I suppose. It's not like it should be spent."

* * *

The return home was much slower with the death of sunlight. Both policemen were quiet. Each one was thinking. It was a mile down the road before Mr. Lestrade finally spoke.

"What's your thought, Constable?"

"It's all a bit mystifying, sir." Cooper said honestly. "If they can give that much money to G—Tinkers, couldn't they afford to put the baby in an orphanage?"

"This person does not trust orphanages." Mr. Lestrade shrugged at the obvious. "On one hand I can't blame them...but..." He took a deep breath in through his nose, his posture straightening up from the effort. "The aristocrats are a bit more...gullible than workmen are, Constable. They want to believe the newspaper stories about fine orphanages, charities for foundlings...how proper and Christian they are, how nice and clean they're kept..." The little man's voice deepened with each passing word the deeper he got into irony. "How few of the children actually die under care."

Cooper shuddered. He and Gansler had missed that fate by a hair...many times. "Only desperate people give up their children." He said at last.

"If they don't kill them before they're born, they often stick it out." Lestrade agreed hollowly. "I don't like this, I tell you. Most unwanted children are sent off to orphanages or those hellpit baby farms. Or, hopefully, a better charity but the oldest methods still work the best: they'll ask around their own families first, to see if a relative wants to take in a child for their own. Even if they can't really afford a child, most families will try to keep it to keep from breaking up the family." He fidgeted under the weight of the heavy topic.

"Someone with that much money...they could have put that baby into a private orphanage! So...why didn't they? Why didn't they is the question."

Cooper didn't know what to say. He had been asking himself that question too.

Silence returned to the growler. It wasn't until they were almost home that Mr. Lestrade spoke again.

"Would a mother write "this child" or would they write, "my child?" He asked quietly. "Odd wording, but I've seen even odder—that's the problem with being sure about something." He rubbed his chin in thought. "I can't imagine a woman parting with their own flesh and blood and doing it so coldly—and yet we see it every day."

"Sir," Cooper hesitated. "What if..." He swallowed hard. "If you'll forgive my asking, but what if the person who abandoned the baby really _did_ know what they were doing when they dropped it off by the Tinkers?"

Lestrade _looked_ at him in the muddy light of the street-lamps.

"You have a knack for good questions, Constable." He said very, _very_ quietly. "That's why the Pearly King talks to you, eh?"

Cooper felt his face turn firey. "I don't rightly know, sir."

"The Tinkers have their own sort of Pearly King," Lestrade told him. "You saw he was dressed better than the rest, and he was...shinier with silver buttons. It's to fool the eye, Constable. He's the spokesman, and he makes decisions for his people, but if things are to go really bad, he will stand up as the scapegoat so his family can get away."

"An old fellow like that?" Cooper was scandalised. "He should be taken care of! He must be pushing eighty with a broom-handle if he's fifty!"

"I don't think even he knows how old he is." Lestrade was honest. "And the system's worked well for them. He's not a fool, Constable. Nor is he a martyr. He's cleverer than the two of us put together. I told you the Roman Gipsies and the Tinkers are different? Well, he's the one that got the two of 'em talking to each other on a regular basis. He's a little too valuable to throw away, but he won't shirk his age-old duties."

Lestrade smiled slowly, unexpectedly. "He'd make a diplomat in the Foreign Office beg for mercy before the hour was out. He refuses to talk to outsiders. I'm one of the few he condescends the honour."

Cooper remembered how the old man smiled when he saw Lestrade. That looked like familial affection more than condescension, but Lestrade was probably embarrassed about affection in public. His Da had teased him about it over the table.

"So." Lestrade threaded his fingers together and propped up his knee, "I speak to my King, and you speak to yours. It's a good trust you're building with the public, Constable. Try not to ruin it but also try not to neglect your duty to the Force."

* * *

They let him off at the barracks; he took a hot shower and sat up with his small lamp and diary, surrounded by his mates who snorted and snored in sleep. Long ago he'd learned that recording events of his day eased his mind and of late, it was turning into a very useful tool in explaining his thoughts or whereabouts. One never did know when one should defend one's actions.

_**Fox, Fowler & Co.**_ was the last private bank in England. There was one or two in Scotland and Wales, but he couldn't think of their names at the moment and they were hopefully unimportant. He frowned as he wrote, solidifying the questions in his mind for future answers.

Tracing the banknotes through their numbers would be a simple matter _if_ Mr. Lestrade could put out the request. People who handled money for a living could be a little funny in their ways; they might get angry at him for the asking. Mr. Lestrade was, after all, just a policeman. Bankers preferred to serve better than themselves. Most of them saw anyone who wasn't a land-owner as a proletariat (Cooper was new to this word and he liked its usefulness). They had a lot of rules of behavior; the lowliest clerk wasn't even allowed to marry until he promoted past the level of the lowest wage. They believed a man who married would be enticed to steal unless he had more income than he needed to his matrimonial upkeep.

So, if Mr. Lestrade couldn't trace the banknotes to their origin, he would have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Cooper wrote his thoughts down as they flew across his brain.

The notes were all fivers. Cooper seen a five-pound note but once, and that from the _**Bank of England**_ so he didn't know of the Tinkers' money was genuine or not. Most people never saw paper money. _His_ family never mucked about with it because it was stupid—paper money got wet, or burnt up in fire, or tore to bits; rats liked paper and wouldn't stop to steal anything to line their nest.

_Real_ money was metal. You had less chance of getting rooked if you had coins. Coining took less cleverness than making false notes, but most people paid sharp to guard themselves from smashers.5

Coins could be buried in the ground. They could be sunk in a stream or down a well. They could be stuffed in a hollow tree or locked under a house and they'd stay put. If there was a fire, the gold and silver might be a little damaged, but the value of the metals stayed the same. There was a gifted goldsmith his Mum knew, a big-hearted fellow with three fingers who preferred gold sovereigns of a particular three years' mintage because the gold content was perfect to melt down in making exquisite Cellini-studio fakes (and no, Cooper did not know the three years' mintage; that was a trade secret).

Cooper shared the Tinkers' distrust of this "gift" of banknotes. He suspected they put even more value on coins than himself. Mr. Dooley's buttons of silver coins—his bank was right there on his person. He could pull off a button for money when times were hard. And the women had worn money on their persons in bracelets, necklaces—even pins. When he thought about it, the Gipsy folk did the same, but they preferred gold more than the Tinkers. Interesting. He mentally racked up a few more differences noticed now that he'd finally met these people and had a hard time believing he could confuse the two tribes. They _were_ different. The Gipsies to their Roman Gold, but the Tinkers to their Welsh Silver.

_And they care about that baby enough to love it_. He recalled the little ankle with the coral bauble. His own mum had sworn to coral for babies to keep them healthy and lucky. Even if it wasn't true, they believed they were doing the right thing for the child. It was clean and fed. A pretty thing and Susan had already lost her heart to it.

Cooper hesitated, because his thinking was going into new areas. Those bank notes... His pencil-led tapped against the soft paper. Most counterfeit notes were small; One or Two pound notes. Fivers _could_ be faked. But why?

The conclusion came to him all at once, and it froze his blood.

* * *

3It's good to see you. How are you?

4thanks

5Those who pass counterfeits to the unsuspecting public. In some ways the lowest of the very low.


	3. Even Lampreys Get Eaten

Cooper finally went to sleep and did not dream until an ear-splitting shrieking sent him jumping upright and reaching blindly for his helmet, truncheon, and whistle.

"Ease off." PC Danforth groaned. "It's just the old man's new alarm clock."

Cooper felt his heart struggle to slow down from its panicked run. "It sounds just like a bleedin' old rooster!" He gasped.

"It IS a bleedin' old rooster." PC Weller grumbled. "'E brought it in last night after you were in bed. Old son-of-a-six-legged-Scotchman said it was the last time Canterbury would sleep through the bleedin' bells."

"This is Canterbury's fault? Let's kill him!"

"'E ain't here. He got pulled off to the Trafalgar an hour ago."

"Oh, never mind then." Duty where one would be up to their leather collar in hoardes of homeless beggars fighting over rotten scraps of food was worse than any thrashing.

Cooper staggered off to a bowl of hot oatmeal, wished fruitlessly for treacle to go with it, and went on with his duty shift.

Eight hours later, he went to see Mr. Lestrade.

* * *

"He's left for the day, lad." Mr. Bradstreet's eyes were red-rimmed and dry as he hefted papers from one box to another (The transfer between Scotland Yard and New Scotland Yard would cause many a sleepless night amongst the Met for many years to come, and that didn't even count the woman's body found in the cellar in '88). "Prolly catch him at the _**Malmsey Keg.**_ He usually ends a sour day with a glass o'Grozet."

"I wouldn't want to be a bother, thank you sir."

"Bosh." Mr. Bradstreet said rudely. "No bother for him, and no bother for you. If you want to talk to him, my advice is to go do it. He'll not take it kindly if you want to say something and then wind up not sayin' it for being a bother."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

"Don't..." The big man paused, thoughtfully stroking one moustache. "Does this have anything at all to do with the Tinkers' case?"

"I think so, sir."

"Then if I valued my hide, I'd find him." Bradstreet was a big man, not quite up to Cooper's height, but one tended to forget such things when the man _looked at you_ the way he did. He was built like Gregson, but he could glare at you like Lestrade (and rumour had it Angels and Devils fled hand in hand when Lestrade glared). Cooper felt sweat popping on over his brow at the Runner's intensity.

"We've got only three Inspectors in London that work with the Tinkers or Gipsies, Cooper." Bradstreet clarified. "These three are under orders to take these cases as they come, even if they're drowning in other cases—which is what's happening now. If Lestrade can't take this, he'll have to turn it over to Youghal or Selleck, and even if you weren't sent to Lestrade, the other two gennulmen are currently far, far away from the office." Something like pity glittered in Bradstreet's eyes.

"If I may, sir," Cooper gulped at his own bravery, "But how does one get assigned to Gipsies and Tinkers?"

"Well, there's the usual way." Bradstreet sucked in his breath and his expression turned wry—wry as only a Northerner could wear. "You could have been a _very, very bad boy_ and this is God's attempt to even your score before your sins weigh in Heaven." He paused and stroked his moustaches thoughtfully. "Then again, that probably doesn't count. You're Cockney enough that St. Peter would be fool to much bother. You'd bring your own leaded weights and top the balance in your favour!" Bradstreet laughed at his wit—as did everyone else within earshot.

Cooper grinned, reached into his belt-pouch, and pulled out his tiny set of weighing-scales. Bradstreet's eyes went round and white with shock as Cooper dandled the set before him, seconds before the stunned audience of the Yard exploded with laughter.

"Exploded" might not have been the right word for this, Cooper mused ten minutes later as the laughter kept going on—someone would come in to demand the cause of the ruckus and when the explanation was finally stuttered out, a new comic would join the fray.

"Oh, Mary's Gold," Bradstreet said at last when his breath returned. "I needed that laugh." He wiped his streaming eyes and blew his nose (Sgt. Hopkins was still hanging on to the desk for support, his face red as a fresh plum). "Good for you, lad. My faith is hereby restored. Gregson will be so _jealous_," he added mysteriously.

"It's not as impressive as it looks," Cooper warned sheepishly. "I pull these out and just the sight breaks up more fights over the stalls than anything else."

"Picking your battles. Good for you." If anything, Bradstreet's wry look deepened. "Which brings me to the other way you can get your office: The Wanderers just refuse to talk to anyone else, and they've made it plain they won't. Some countries deal with 'em with threats, some with violence, some with gaol. But England deals with 'em by appointing ambassadors."

"I suppose that makes sense," Cooper said in unconvincing tones.

Bradstreet grinned from ear to ear—if anything, it make him look even more of an alarming bugbear. "As well as you should." He told the young man. "Aren't you the Ambassador for the Costers?"

* * *

Cooper was like most Londoners—he kept to one tavern and no other unless it was for business. Anything else was like cheating on one's lady...or stealing out of Mum's purse. He knew the '_**Keg**_ had been his Dad's, so he knew where it was. He aimed in the right direction and took off on foot, doing his best to avoid the puddles that spontaneously birthed themselves before his eyes. The fogs were rolling in with murderous intent; as he watched the far end of the street fade away into a grey nothing, the street-lamps a pitiable and hissing combatant.

With the fog vanished most of the people until Cooper felt quite alone. It was probably just the feelings that came with his work, he told himself.

Inside the _**'Keg**_ the crowd was quiet. They all looked to the newcomer of course; Cooper pulled his helmet off, signalling he was off duty. A few shoulders relaxed and he looked around, seeking any familiar face.

He found it in the far corner, back sensibly to the wall, elbows on the table (shocking, but there were no women present), and nursing a dark clay mug of something with a yellow beard. Its twin rested just at his elbow.

"Good-evening to you, Constable." Mr. Lestrade's dark eyes had narrowed just a bit, but his demeanor was as formally polite as ever. "This is a bit out of your normal way, isn't it?"

"I was...wondering if I could speak with you, sir."

"Sit down." Mr. Lestrade had removed his gloves, displaying hands once scarred and calloused from hard work. Even if he'd chosen to live soft for the rest of his span, those marks would stay with him. Cooper noticed how the thumb-nail had been flattened (probably a blow), and the thickened flesh of muscle and skin on the outer sides and the first joints of the thumbs almost down to the wrist: rubbings from the coarse stitches on Bobby's gloves and hours of gripping truncheon or lantern. Hands like his dad's. His own hands were starting to build the same patterns.

Cooper set his helmet down carefully and Mr. Lestrade pushed his second vessel over. "My companion couldn't make it," he said calmly. "Treat yourself."

"Thank you, sir." Cooper took a thirsty drink. The cider was smooth. Just enough alcohol for a kick; it didn't have bubbles. He remembered something about how the old-fashioned people preferred their ciders "natural."

"What can I do for you, Constable?"

"I was...I was wondering something about those fivers." Cooper cleared his throat and lowered his voice. "I don't know so much about counterfeiting."

"Ask away." Mr. Lestrade shrugged. Without his coat he looked even smaller, and somehow a little more approachable. Those eyes would never lose their strange depths.

"Well...most notes that are faked are just the smallest notes. One or two pound notes I remember." Cooper took another sip for courage. "That gets 'em into the public faster, and the faster they do that, the harder it is to trace 'em. But if you're talking about fivers...that's a lot more money at stake. People hang on to fivers if they get them, don't they? Because that's more money in the same amount of space that's in a one-pound note?"

"Go on."

"Common folks, they don't hold much with paper money. But the gentlemen, they do. They _invented_ paper money. They did that so they could travel about with it. So if the fivers are false, they were meant to be going for the gentlemen, weren't they?"

Mr. Lestrade had been silent through the entire blab, but his eyebrows had climbed higher and higher throughout Cooper's speech. "That's sound thinking, Constable." He said calmly. "And you're right. Keep going."

Cooper breathed deep. "IF that was the baby's mother who left it with the Tinkers, how'd she get that much money? Would she be a gentleman's wife or mistress caught in a bad way?"

"Possibly, but I have the impression you think otherwise."

"Well." Cooper was nervous now. "75/...that's a year's wages for a lot of lucky people."

"I think you've lost me there, Constable." Mr. Lestrade's eyes had somehow managed to open up more. Cooper felt de-fleshed under the full exposure of that gaze.

"Well, sir, when a girl gets in a bad way, she usually has the sense to hide it. But what if she was a goose and told her employer or the master of the house of her condition? All they'll think about is their reputation, and they've sent off enough girls in disgrace, _if_ they don't kill them or put them in a sanitorium." Cooper took a deep breath. "But once in a while, the girl isn't the goose. She gets sent off but with Quiet money. She agrees to the money and promises to never contact the family ever again. She gets her year's wages and she leaves, never to be seen again. No-one expects to see her again. She has money, and the family's name stays...clean."

"Which is a shame, but that's how it is." Mr. Lestrade drank his cider. "We're assuming the girl in question is a servant, you know. Maids never get more than five or six pounds a year if they're lucky. What if she's the daughter of the house?"

"I think they'd pay more to get a baby further away." Cooper blurted. "I"m sorry, sir, I was thinking that even most ladies—gentlemen's ladies that is—wouldn't have a lot of money around. Gentlemen don't carry money around themselves because it's common. And _ladies_ are even worse because money dirties up their nice white gloves. So they have other people carry money around for them...or they write cheques. So how would a woman have that much money on her person that she can leave it with a baby?"

"Because she's got the key to the family safe?" Mr. Lestrade was almost smiling now. It didn't look very nice, but Mr. Lestrade had one of those faces. "That's a lot of walking you've done about in your head." Mr. Lestrade looked uneasy for the first time. "Did you talk to anyone about this?"

"Sir, no, I swear no, sir."

"Calm down, lad." Mr. Lestrade called him 'lad' for the first time and didn't seem to notice. He sipped a little foam from his cider and kept the drink elevated, momentarily lost in thought. His free hand tapped a soft dance on the battered table-top. "You did the right thing, coming here." He said at last. He pulled out a tiny watch and frowned at the numbers. "I'll have to leave, but keep me alerted of any other ideas you have." He stood, draining the last of the cider. "And I'll keep _you_ alerted."

Cooper had the distinct impression he was being promoted. It was exhilarating in the way his first job as a second-storey thief had been exhilarating...looking down from the window with his pockets full of goods, the eight-year old boy realised he would eventually have to let go of the sill and jump to the ground.

The thrill at his successful pinch had been quickly swallowed by his rudimentary gasp of Newton's Laws. Terror at the dawning knowledge that the weight of the swag could affect his impact upon the cobblestones followed his earlier euphoria. Cooper had finally jumped, but he'd been much wiser about his choice of career after that.

Until now, perhaps...

Cooper stared at his cider. It was half-drunk.

If the attention of the Inspectors was his reward for his eternal curiosity...he might as well be glad he got a drink at the end of his day.

* * *

Cooper rose at dawn and marked another day off—closer to his precious single day of rest before he could look to another fourteen days of walking. Much to his surprise his beat had been moved from spare to a three-week rotation of the Square. He frowned, scratched his jaw and wondered if someone had finally noticed he was from the Square in the first place. If so, that would explain it. The Gaffers really preferred you to have lived in your ward at least three to five years before they assigned you that beat. It was a good policy that kept the closeness between policeman and citizen.

Cheered up by this small but significant improvement in his life, Cooper floated through the first ten miles of his beat. Even the heavy crabshells about his feet couldn't pull his spirits down. The sun made a brief appearance and he had his hands full watching the Street Arabs searching other people's pockets. The third time he saw Dicky MaCrone angling in to a tourist he said not a word but grabbed the tyke by the cuff of his ear and patiently dragged him, squalling like a sack of cats, to his mother's greens-stall three streets down.

"Mrs. MaCrone," Cooper announced in a voice loud enough to be heard from the top of the Bells, "It pleases me no end to tell you that your son is destined to be a fine, upstanding citizen of our great city. A fine man he'll be, honest as the day is long and completely straightforward."

Mrs. MaCrone, or Lilly Ryan as she'd been when they'd run together nicking handkerchiefs, stared at him over her boxes of mixed lettuces (Deer's Tongue, Oak Leaf, Speckled Trout). Her fine black brows met in the middle as her son's howls of outrage floated to the clouded Heavens. "And quite glad I am to hear that, MIS-TER Constable," she answered in an equally ponderous voice. "But if you don't mind my askin' how you came about this statement?"

"Because he's your son, of course, and that means he's a bright lad." Cooper gave the reddening ear a delicate twist to make sure his prisoner heard him. "Bright enough to know that he has no choice but to turn to honest work for a living...seeing as though he's utter %# )% for anything criminal."

He left them, contrite and soon-to-be-reformed public criminal and mother, ignoring the spatter of applause and not a little cheerful cat-calling. The lad would either smarten up and get more clever about his street trade, or he'd have to move to the cantering for real. Either way he was less of a problem for Cooper. Thirty minutes later he was giving two drunkards in the gutter the choice between getting themselves arrested or letting him take them home to their wives.

"That's no choice at all!" The only one capable of speech glared at him as the Black Maria pulled up.

"Well we have to offer something else." Cooper said peacefully. "Think of it as a sobriety test, Hawkins. If you're clean enough to know what a bad deal it is, how drunk are you really?"

"There you've done it." PC Palmer said sadly as he slammed the doors shut. "He'll be trying to figure that one out for the next six hours."

"He deserves to be kept busy." Cooper sniffed.

Palmer giggled under his chin-strap. "You're starting to sound like Grigsby. Well done, Lad. I'll be sure to tell him all his hard work and bluster is starting to take in your soft little head."

"You're too kind."

"Don't I know it." Palmer adopted a serious face, but that was because the public was always on the lookout for weakness in a Bobby. A few stones were thrown as a token courtesy; nothing too serious. Cooper winced as a pebble bounced off the top of his head.

"Ay, reminds me not to drink the night before I'm on duty." Palmer noted dryly as he finished writing up his slip. "The bits off tha' older streets are the worst. Got a high pitch when they hit you. Cheshunt says it's due to the density of the aggregate."

"I'll keep that in mind, Palmer."

Palmer looked over his paper, frowned, crossed out two lines and tried to correct whatever it was he'd written. "The lads are going to _**the Elegant Barley**_ tunnite; want to come along? Waverton's needing a bit of a boost."

"What happened to Waverton?"

"Some opium-bobbled scum knocked over the stove his family was using to keep warm...burnt 'em all up in their sleep. _He_ got out." Palmer shook his head. "Waverton had to keep his neighbors from killing him, and in the scuffle he ran off. Five children, his wife, her sister—all dead."

"Poor Waverton." Cooper said with feeling. "I hope he told them better luck next time."

"Pretty much." Palmer assured him. "Just do yourself a favour, eh? If you run into anyone by Townsend's Dry Goods dead with a raw eel in his mouth, call it in as a mystery."

"Oi, You've got to watch out for those damned eels when they get the urge to swim up dry land..."

"Ugh." Palmer eyed the street distastefully. "That ward's so wet, the little divils just think it's a freshet off the Wandle...But do let me know if you see dry land, eh? I'd like to show my children what it looks like someday."

* * *

Cooper finished the rest of his shift quietly. He was feeling good because he was starting to develop an eye for the different sorts gadding about 'his' beats. It wasn't easy to learn when you weren't allowed to talk unless you were performing the lines of duty; nor were you allowed refreshment stops or the luxury of a place to sit and eat. He longed for his tobacco but that must needs wait until his duty discharged—he made do with the perfumed clouds coming off the tobacconists' and the open-air cluster of men with newspapers. He was learning how to catch distinct threads of conversation in the confusion that was London on any given day—and most importantly, how to act as though he didn't hear anything useful.

The Costermongers were a tough, brave sort and Cooper was proud to be related to them. Perhaps they were poor but they were never poorly—they were hard-nosed and ready for a fight but woe betide the man who did not add some of his meagre savings to someone in need. They could be a most reliable source for gossip and if he went off duty and made a show of settling down in his favourite inn, they knew he would listen to what they had to say and wouldn't mind working off-duty to straighten out a problem or three.

He put in his card with relief and wandered to his usual tavern.

* * *

Cooper settled against the darkest corner with his pint. After the long day he felt weightless out of uniform...and oddly empty. How could he grow to like that heavy mantle in such a short period of time? Around him the pub chattered like the primates at the zoological gardens and he sipped and contemplated what he was starting to call "The Pearly King's Case."

Six months as a copper, and he'd found very little that was out of the ordinary. People losing things, people stealing things, people lying, cheating and stealing on top of the stealing—people running off without so much as a by-your-leave...some common destruction of public property, fraud...

Death was common for a copper. Some parts of London wanted two bobbies sharing the beat so they could deal with all the corpses in the gutters, or floating down the canals. But most of the deaths were of natural causes—starvation and illness being the biggest portion of the Reaper. Old age or some other infirmity was the next, and there never existed a day when accidents went down.

Murder, though...

Murder was one thing he hadn't considered in this case. But why not? What if the King had suspected something truly foul in the play? He did come to Cooper—young and still green—instead of address the issue amongst his own court. That's what Kings normally did. He wondered if the King knew more about the baby than he wanted to show.

His da had once said that if you lined up the cases of murder against the usual deaths, murder would be the short list. "Unless you found a way to arrest the fogs for all the lives cost." His mum had told him to stop being flippant; it was no better than whistling past the graveyard.

"That's hardly a face to suit its maker, Constable."

Cooper jumped like a chestnut over a hot griddle. A drop of ale hit the back of his bare hand. Mr. Lestrade was standing there with a twisted smile across his mouth.

"Mr. Lestrade." Cooper stammered.

The little Inspector ignored the poisonous glares directed to the stranger-interloper upon their territory, and pulled up a chair to sit across from Cooper. "Nice little place you have here," he declared as he ran a supercilious eye across an atmosphere made mirk from smoke as much as hostility. "Got any Grozet, d'you think?"

"I'm not sure. I never tried to order any." Cooper swallowed.

"Bitter for me, Miss." Lestrade coolly lifted his hand to the barmaid as the other hand idly leaned against the edge of a protruding truncheon at his waist. The service was just barely polite, which was a mark above the usual standard. Lestrade promptly turned his back to a human sea of territorial aggression and leaned forward, hands around his drink. Cooper decided _no one_ was that green; either Lestrade was wearing plate armour under his shirt, or he must know something that would increase his odds for survival.

"Not bad." Lestrade announced after a swallow. "You've been at work for us how long? Six months now?"

"Almost seven, sir." Cooper felt a drop of sweat slide down his neck as a few of the more familiar bruisers shuffled and grumbled in their direction.

"What's your intention, Constable?" Lestrade sliced him with those dark eyes. "Be a copper like your old Dad, God rest him, or something else? Want to stay with us or move on? Have you decided?"

Cooper floundered. "I—I'm a policeman, sir."

"Planning on testing up?"

"When the chance comes." Two years on the street before that could happen. In other words, nineteen more months left.

"Good."

Cooper drank his own pint for something to do.

"I was wondering if you would mind adding a bit of help to the case." Mr. Lestrade managed to aim his voice in a way that he could be heard by most of the patrons without sounding as though he was trying to be heard. "Seeing as how the King thought it important, I put the rest of my cases aside. No sense letting the gentleman wait on a concern."

Cooper saw at least two hands stop twitching over coat pockets where knives, bludgeons, and brass knuckles were normally kept. He let himself breathe deep. "How can I help you, sir?"

"Have you met Jones yet?"

"Ur...Jones, sir? Which Jones?"

"THE Jones."

* * *

Jones was a common name—Peter slightly less so, but put them together and 'Peter Jones' existed four times in the Metropolitan rolls—and there were doubtless a few more hiding out in the attendance sheets of the Rail Police, Water Police, and the City of London.

None of the others could possibly be mistaken for the Peter Jones that loomed before Cooper's eyes.

For one thing, the man had the build of a prize-winning fighter. His neck was thick as a bull's and his ears had been flattened by a few too many fights. His nose had missed some of this action, but it had been broken more than once. Large hands rested inside gloves that must have been tailored to fit—Cooper couldn't recall ever seeing such large hands in his life. For all his considerable bulk he was restless as a child kept after school, and was pacing up and down with a tea-can in his hands. No drunkard held his brandy-bottle as fervently as the esteemed Mr. Jones held on to his tea. Thick, sweet clouds of Black Assam drifted around his short-cropped black beard and clung like more of the London fog.

The Cockneys called Jones "The Storefront," because he was as big as a shop, shared his name with the Peter Jones Department Store, and both entities hurt if you ran into them.

"Lovely." Lestrade muttered under his breath. Louder: "We're here, Jones! Keep your hat on!"

"Some of us have delicate constitutions, Lestrade." Jones said instantly. Cooper decided he was afraid of him. Eyes like flint arrow-heads shot over his crown to his toes. "What have you got for me?"

"I don't know yet, Jones." Lestrade said patiently. "Let's sit where it's private and have a talk."

"Nothing wrong with having a meet off-duty." Jones agreed sagely. Cooper held back respectfully but with slight shock as the plainclothed men strolled inside his brother's court.

It wasn't Gansler's per se, but his was the coffee stall inside the little square. In the old days it was probably a Tudor stables, but with the rise and fall of architects, things changed and often until they were no longer recognisable even to their old residents. The square of earth had been paved over with tight stone, and for three of the four sides of the square stretched out canvas awnings to keep patrons dry for haggling and chattering.

The Cooper brothers knew to ignore each other unless it was business, but Thad slipped a few glances in the right direction. His brother was busy with polishing the little lamps he lit at night to attract the patrons leaving the Vic. Light, warmth—and coffee. It drew the sorts he wanted, for the Temperance Movement loved the coffee-cup as well as they did the tea-pot. And least anything think a Temperance Man want for trouble, Gansler kept a small arsenal under his counter within easy reach.

Jones went to a sausage-roll vendor who clearly knew his customer. He had a thick roll of hot bread wrapped in newspaper and his hands before the Inspector opened his mouth. Jones dropped money into his tin and just as brusquely shoved two more rolls into his guests' hands. Even Lestrade was momentarily speechless, but he recovered quickly.

_He probably didn't have a choice,_ Cooper thought. Jones was a force of nature.

"Right." Jones sniffed and led them to a wooden table and chairs that was mercifully dry if not free from windy draughts. "Welcome to my home office."

Lestrade had been chewing one of the rolls—which led Cooper to believe the cooking was to be trusted. He twisted his head upward and behind his left shoulder, peering at the second-storey row of tiny windows set into the brick walls. He made short work of his first mouthful of decent food in over seven hours and swallowed hard, washing it down with tea.

"Still living up there, I take it," he said when he got his breath back. "I've never once questioned your nerve, Jones."

"The rumors about the building codes are completely false." Jones sniffed.

"I was talking about your mother-in-law. Does she still own the building?"

"She was this morning." Jones leaned back and ripped his bread apart. "Right. Cooper, I'd appreciate you give me your version of the report you filed about the missing girl found in the Thames."

Like Lestrade, Cooper made quick work of his mouthful. "Yes, sir." He said respectfully. "What would you like me to say, sir?"

Jones snorted, but his battered face gentled with a smile. "I see you've been teaching him. Good job, Lamps." He looked dead-on at the young Constable. "Your report was a bit cloudy in a few places. Who reported the young lady missing?"

Cooper felt his heart stop. "It was the Pearly King of Coburn Square, sir." He gave a description of the King, and even included his designs. Jones wrote it all down neatly. He was one of the few London-born policemen and knew what was good information in a report.

"Lizzie Blackburn was a familiar face at Coburn Square, sir. She was small for her age, and she was smart enough to use that for her advantage in canting. She was selling nuts and soup-herbs long after her sisters outgrew 'em for vegetables and fish."

"If she was that smart, was it better to be Wilson's maid? He's not the smartest suit at the tailor's."

Lestrade nearly choked on his sausage. "There you are. Man could dull a pair of check trousers."

"Her people said she wanted a place to stay where she could come and go without too many questions, said she was studying up to another trade. She told them that Mr. Wilson was so easy to work for he never noticed if she was there or not—so long as the place was clean and he had his bread and tea when he got home. He was a simple man and he had simple tastes. But I don't think he really knew it took no more than three minutes to make a pot of tea or less than that to cut up a loaf of bread!" Cooper was still confused at the strangeness of Jabez Wilson.

"So even though she was grown, he believed her when she said she was fourteen." Jones sighed for the vulnerable brains in the public they were sworn to protect. "Some people really need to get married," he said under his breath. "A smart wife would be the end of that man's problems."

Cooper wisely kept quiet and ate his roll.

"What's gotten me riddled is this," Jones turned back a few pages and pointed to his notes. "She gave Mr. Wilson notice; even groomed her replacement, and left what she didn't want with ah...Miss Gertie Ivy...and moved out. She was never seen again by Mr. Wilson or Miss Ivy which isn't unusual. But her family on the street never saw her again and _that_ was the problem. They reported her missing after a few months of her not being seen at the usual places. Lizzie no longer sold her wares on the streets, but she showed her loyalty by becoming one of the buyers and she was regular in her habits."

"Interesting, wouldn't you think?" Jones tapped the papers with a much-shorter pencil at the conclusion. Lestrade shrugged—which Cooper was learning meant many different things—and sipped a cup from the Gansler's stall. Somehow he'd managed to buy a cup and return without Jones noticing his absence.

"Got some queer points." Lestrade said as he completely relished another sip of the hot, bitter drink. Cooper envied him with a bitterness to rival the cup.

"Too right." Jones growled. He took in Cooper's fuddled face. "Not your fault, Constable. Your missing girl once worked for a fellow in one of my cases this last October."

"John Clay's case, sir?" Cooper was bold enough to ask. Jones was temporarily dumbstruck, which hastened the young man to explain: "We're still talking about your case over at the barracks, sir. It was quite a thing!"

"_Well_..." Jones' blunt surprise had thawed under the blunt praise. He bravely ignored Lestrade's much-too-solemn face. "I would have been happier if we could have kept the bracelets on Mr. John Clay, but I'm not in charge of the prisons."

"I'm sorry, sir. It was an amazing arrest." Cooper wouldn't tell Jones he knew the two Constables assigned to guard at Wilson's pawnbrokerage. Wilson's never-steady equilibrium had been fatally warped between the shock of Spaulding's deceit and the League's dissolution. In a moment of weakness he had tipped the Inspectors a fiver and the Constables 2/ each; Harrow and Dacre had been popular at the taverns for a fortnight.

(Still green in his inexperience, Cooper wondered why someone as parsimonious as Wilson would be so generous; Harrow had drunkenly pointed out that the more he spent on public good-will now, the less whispers he'd get for being the fool of a murderer.)

In the meantime, Lestrade had given up being serious. "Didn't I tell you?" He murmured. "Quite a feather in your cap, Jones."

"Which I'd still be wearin' proudly if he was so polite as to stay behind the bars where he belonged." Jones rapped his paper with the tip of his pencil. "If there's the slightest chance I can thread this poor girl's death to his rotten heart in any way, I'll die a happy man."

"I'd rather you not die at all." Lestrade barked with a showing of teeth that made Cooper jump.

"Well, we won't discuss it, Lamps." Jones said evenly. "But the facts are this: Lizzie left Jabez Wilson's employ almost as soon as Mr. Clay was arrested. She was clearly not as young as Mr. Wilson thought she was—I'll not know how a man can swallow chunks of dictionary but not tell the difference between a fourteen-year old child and a grown-year old woman..." His shudder was echoed by his worldlier companions. Ignorance was a marketable commodity in London.

"This isn't a very pretty problem." Mr. Lestrade said to the sudden quiet that surrounded their little table. The world had suddenly transferred from hustle-bustle and vendors' patter to the patter of heavy rainfall against roofs of clay, slate, brick, wood and canvas. Each surface made a different music, and when the wind picked up the men were all but swallowed in a roar not unlike the ocean. If the oceans smelled like hot coffee, roasted apples stuffed with raisins, and blood sausages cooked in red pepper.

Cooper felt a frown steal over his brow at the dejected silence wrapping around Jones like so much cloak-wool. The man was pinched and grey in the dulled light, and when the vendors hastily lit more lamps for their own use (and to lure more spenders), they painted his rough face in sickly yellow. The Fog was rolling in, crawling about the corners of the narrow foot-streets and swirling about their ankles like so many phantom cats.

Lestrade's sallow face was set taut as a bowstring. He was clearly worried about his mate, but something held him back from saying or doing anything. Cooper chose to follow his example.

At last, Jones looked up from his study of the backs of his hands and leaned his broad back against the chair. "Might as well tell you what this is all about." His attention was mostly on Lestrade, and Cooper was grateful. "When we were in the basement of that bank, John Clay's last words as a free man was _"Jump, Archie, jump and I'll swing for it!"_

Lestrade's dark eyes narrowed. "That wasn't in the report _I_ read." He said sharply.

Jones breathed through his nose, a model of restrained patience. "Not all of us write word-for-word accounts, Lestrade." He said heavily. "And there was a lot going on. You'll agree that Mr. Clay's words are a bit unusual for a man about to be caught in the act of stealing French gold."

"Huh." Lestrade made a sound not unlike that of a horse with low opinions of his groom. "When was the last time someone was hung for robbing a bank when there were no deaths attached?"

"That's just it." The bones of Jones' large hands knotted beneath the skin, going white as dry bones themselves. "We've found no deaths attached to _**the City and Suburban**_ so far. And when was the last time we hung a gentleman—even if they were found guilty of murder?" His audience nodded knowingly. It was a fact of life and no point whining about it.

"He's been suspected for murder even before this, Jones." Lestrade sipped his coffee. "Three cases alone..."

"Suspected. Nothing proven yet. When Mr. Holmes told me he knew where he'd be...I had my hopes up let me tell you!"

"Is there another meaning to 'swing for it?" Cooper asked timidly.

The Inspectors regarded him thoughtfully.

"Not that we know of," Jones admitted. "Lestrade would know better than me—he has to work with gentlemen, poor man."

"I've never heard anything to the like." Lestrade said slowly. "But we'll put that on the back of the hob and let it cook, eh?" He passed his half-full cup to a grateful Jones. "You can help me drink it." He said firmly. "It's been a while since I had coffee that wasn't half acorn."

"Acorn's good for you." Jones tried to joke. He sipped and rallied under the hot drink. "So there we have it. Clay let something slip, he did. His words tell me that he thought he would be hangable. I've been trying since October to find what it was. Wouldn't it be just our luck if it was one of his crimes under one of his many aliases? Not only do we have to prove the crime, but we have to prove the alias as well!"

"You were hoping the girl's death was within the time limit." Lestrade nodded. "To all appearances it was a suicide, Jones."

"But she killed herself some time after he escaped. Was there anything about the remains you thought odd at all?" Jones asked desperately.

Cooper held his breath, thinking. "Lizzie was always small," he said at last. "She was so small the dredgers who found her thought she was a child, and they were faster to call the police than they might. They even left her jewellry on her, which they hardly ever do." Dredgers tended to 'pay themselves' for every corpse discovered in their grisly work. They reasoned that they might as well because the police were going to steal the goods anyway. "It was a cheap little necklace with an enameled locket, no picture inside it, and a chain bracelet with a threepenny coin. Some of the children keep their Maundy money for good luck. The eels had found her, so there really wasn't much left. Ate her from the inside out. But her clothes were intact and her hair was still in its braid." He shook his head. "Long as I'd known her, she had bright yellow hair and she always kept it in a French braid. It got attention, and you need to grab the eye of people when you're selling. She had it tied around the back of her head with a tortoiseshell comb, I suppose to keep her hair up and respectable." He closed his eyes, still thinking. "She had on good black shoes. _Good_ shoes. They were well kept, almost new. Black leather with a bit of polish still on them. I remember that she hated shoes, went about barefoot as much as she could so it didn't surprise me these shoes were square in the toe. If she had to have something on her feet, she would've had squares. Heels were wide too.

"Her dress was a bit funny." He finished slowly. "Dark dove grey with a high collar all the way up to the jaw-bone, flat stitches over the shoulders, matching white cuffs, a white smock over it, sort of like a maid's, but too formal. The shoulder seams were tight as drum-skins! Whatever she was doing for a living it was probably something like desk work or one of the softer jobs, no heavy lifting or pulling."

"A desk job?" Jones scowled. "Was she smart enough for that sort of work?"

"Oh, yes, sir!" Cooper breathed. "She was smart as anything! She knew shorthand and Morse Code, and she could tell if a weight was off just by touching it. Had a head for the physical. Everyone in her family had the talent I've heard."

"I'm sure that wasn't in the report." Lestrade blinked.

"She wanted a money job, and we all believed her when she got as far as she did." Cooper shrugged.

"You're sure her drowning was a suicide?"

"Yes, sir." Cooper said firmly. "She did it in plain sight of two crawlers. They didn't report it because they knew if they waited, they'd be offered a free drink for information."

"Bleeding Great Christ." Jones spat.

"If Clay didn't kill her, why'd she kill herself?" Lestrade leaned his chin into his hand-heel and scowled.

Cooper could only shrug. "People kill themselves all the time."

"And these are the Cockneys." Jones pointed out. "The usual reasons—getting disgraced with child or getting seduced by the master of the house doesn't _quite_ apply here."

Lestrade closed his eyes and exhaled, exhausted, but they all knew Jones was right. The Cockneys lived by their rules, and they had their own notions of respectability that was as hard-headed as any Royal's. If anything, their views were more pragmatic and realistic, with none of that sharp-cornered morality to swallow. Suicide was as frequent as rubbish in the gutter. They were already denied Heaven to believe the priests, so what was another crime to add?

"Could be cancer." Cooper offered lamely. "It took both her parents and her brother too." That did happen to be a common reason behind suicide.

Lestrade was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, but not arguing. Cooper and Jones had more in common with this sort of crime than he did. His origins were no less humble than theirs, but you could tell by his eyes that suicide would never occur to him.

"This is raising more questions than answers." The little man said at last. "It sounds like she was wearing an office dress of some sort—wouldn't the office report her missing?"

"Aren't we all full of good questions today." Jones said glumly over the sound of the rain. "I'm going to get us all some more coffee—are you a coffee-man, Cooper?"

"Sir, yes, sir." Cooper breathed.

"Right. Three Cups of Temperance coming up."

Jones grumbled his way under the awnings for more of the blessed drink. Cooper couldn't believe his luck. A meal and hot coffee? He should find a lottery ticket on his way to the barracks.

"S# $(*&#%," Lestrade said at last and under his breath. Cooper tried to pretend he didn't know what that meant, even if he did agree with the sentiment.

"I don't know anyone who has tried harder, and longer, with less reward than Jones has in hunting Clay." Lestrade said at last. "He's said it often: Better to grab Clay than any crook in London, and he means it. The man's a smoothly oiled, handsome, charming, educated, admirable, smug, insufferable, calculating, cool, coy, bloody great louse on the scalp of England. He's a giant bedbug. He's a damned syphilitic lamprey and he makes lamb's # %# of the police every time."

"Even lampreys wind up eaten." Jones had returned, and passed out steaming cups of joy. "Nicely said, by the way. You've been up at Baker Street again, haven't you?"

"Right. The girl is a scratch. Now what?"

Jones sighed like a dying man. "I don't know yet, but I haven't given up. I asked Mr. Holmes to let me know if he ran into that Royal Duke's beggar's-begotten grandchild again."

"He wasn't asked and he sought you out the last time." Lestrade smiled.

"Of course he did. He knows where his cases come from!"

Lestrade chuckled, the sound echoing into his large mug. "He's bluff and bluster to the police, but he certainly knows whom to contact for his cases."

Jones shuddered. "Spooky, that." He decided. "Sometimes I think he pays more attention to what we do than the Commissioner!"

"Oh, I know he does." Lestrade drank his coffee with a contented expression. "And I can prove it."

"Yes? How?"

"The Commissioner has to sleep once in a while."

Jones was a moment in catching on, but when he did the laugh was rich and welcome.


	4. The Distinguished Club

Cooper stumbled into his bunk tired but awake. The coffee wasn't to blame; he had a head full of thoughts and not a one would let him idle off into sleep.

He stretched out flat on his back with the blankets over his chest and listened to the uneven rise and fall of breaths, snores, and occasional coughs as everyone got through the business of a few hours' rest. Morning would come with another quick meal and black tea. He'd go back to Coburn Square.

Today had left him uneasy. He was too new to the work to get the attention of so many officers. Lestrade was understandable; but Lestrade, Bradstreet, Gregson _and_ Jones? Only part of this could be about his father. The other part...well, he was involved in a queer case. Like it or not.

And Cooper honestly didn't know if he did like it or not. His promise to the Pearly King seemed a hundred years in the past, the first page of a book almost read through. Lizzie had been one of them, but he hadn't felt any more or less sympathy for her than he had anyone else. She would have felt the same. They cared for each other in the streets, but too much care took away from those in _real_ need, and Lizzie was dead. She wouldn't have expected fuss and sentiment over herself if it took away the same from someone else.

If one held no fear of the soul after death, why fear the consequence of suicide? The answer to that was...there was more fear for being a burden than there was sticking to life. It could have been cancer; her parents had drank themselves to death when it came to them, and her brother had deliberately taken hard work and harder gin, knowing he was too weak and frail to survive more than a few weeks.

Given notice when God called Time, they chose to take themselves. The parents had done it to spare their children the burden of taking care of them. Jonny had ended his own life earlier than schedule for the same reason; to keep the burden off his sister.

The problem with all this was...what was Lizzie's reason if she had one? She had no family left; even the adults who helped raise her were dead themselves or moved off to other parts of London.

_Probably cancer, _Cooper told himself._ Four out of four. It happens all the time. Prefer to die fast than die slow._

But he fell asleep thinking there was something else he was missing. Something important.

* * *

Cooper was always vulnerable in the morning. He was in the middle of pouring cold water against his neck in the hopes it would wake him up when Gigsby stormed in and took twenty years off the young Constable's natural lifespan. "Cooper!" He snapped. "You're wanted in the Big Office." This was pronounced as if Cooper had decided to throw away all of Grigbsy's selfless hours in training him, spit in his eye, drop all and join a monastery.

"Sir?" Cooper asked around chattering teeth.

Grigsby sighed through his nose. "Must I buy another Covent Garden1 Alarm Clock?"

"Oh, God." Someone whispered in the back.

"Yes?" Grigsby whirled, his godless eyes flashing.

"Sir, yes, sir." Cooper's aching back snapped upright.

"Right." Grigsby poured vitriol over them all with his gaze. "In uniform and off you go. _Constables!"_ He directed to the cowering forms trapped in the barracks by his presence. "Any further requests?"

Cooper hadn't known it was possible to run quite so fast or so long in full uniform.

Mr. Lestrade was actually in the process of walking into New Scotland Yard. His hand was on the front rail as he saw Cooper puffing up.

"Oh, dear." The little man noted. "Grigsby, wasn't it? Glad you made it, but you didn't have to run the whole way—just until you were out of his sight."

"I'm not sure that would be wise, sir." Cooper gasped, hands on his knees as he doubled over for breath.

"Constable, just because a man _says_ he's Almighty God doesn't mean he really _is_ the Almighty." Lestrade had the look of a man who has related this story many times in the past. "Always ask for credentials first. Have 'em part the Red Sea that's filling up the streets at Lambeth, eh?" He shook his head sadly at the young man trying not to vomit into the gutter. "You do know he'll keep doing it until you snap back."

"With all due respect, sir, I have no intentions of snapping back."

"Well done, Lad." Lestrade grinned that really scary smile again. Between that smile and Grigsby's Apocalyptic thunderation, Cooper wondered if a return to his criminal roots would lengthen his lifespan by an appreciable amount.

But Lestrade was still grinning as they walked in (slowly, so Cooper could limp after with some shred of dignity).

Mr. Gregson was waiting at the end of the hallway with a stack of odd-looking wooden cigar boxes stamped in Chinese characters, and a string bag of...dried fish? Hanging from his left arm. "Well?" He asked.

"No thanks, Gregson. I had breakfast with the wife."

"Not that, you ninnyhammer. Him." Gregson snapped.

Lestrade's grin grew to stupendous lines. "He said he wouldn't stand up to Grigsby. That makes two sovereigns you owe me now. Pay up so I can spend it all on a good cause."

"Old Leathersides is selling dictionaries." Gregson said in ill humour as he pulled out the coins. "You'd find them edifying, Lestrade. They're in English. A few have pictures."

"I'm still laughing, Gregson." Lestrade swept the money into his palm and vanished into his office.

"Eh, laugh away!" Gregson shouted after him, then turned to smirk at Cooper. "Joke's on him." He gloated. "I'm the one who brewed the tea today."

Cooper sank into Lestrade's guest-chair with shaky legs. Lestrade was already entrenched in the office, spreading file after file across his desk. "Here, take that one." He said. "We only have a few hours to work, so we'll make it count."

Cooper obeyed. He opened the paper to see the particulars of Lizzie Blackburn's death. "What am I looking for, sir?"

"_You_ are going to go over as much as we can to make certain we can't link up John Clay to Lizzie's suicide." Lestrade found a folder himself and started reading as he spoke. "It's a thin chance, but she was connected to him, and there is a missing case of murder. We just don't know what it is." The little man's voice was brisk and businesslike—gone was his earlier jibes with Gregson. "We had an interesting night when we parted ways, Constable."

"Sir?" Cooper ventured bravely.

"Mmn-hm." Mr. Lestrade flipped through page after page until he found one in particular, and placed it directly in front of the young man's nose. "Read that if you please, before you do anything else."

Cooper hesitantly did as he was told. It was part of a three-page dossier on John Clay.

"_Mr. Clay, alias Vincent Spaulding, alias Oscar Tregarde..."_ Clay read through four lines of aliases, until someone mercifully placed a foot-note upon the last sentence and stuck the rest in the back of the file. _"...is a small man and beginning a stout build. His eyes are dark blue, small, and widely-spaced. With a notion to his vanity he wears the best of clothing befitting his station, or that of the false identity's station he can purchase._

"_Mr. Clay remains clean-shaven despite that he is a grown man. He is recently turned thirty years of age and carries immaculate grooming notions. His skin is fair, his mouth thin and well-shaped with clearly defined strong chin and cheek-bones. His hair is kept at moderate length, often combed to one side or the other with the hair pushed up well above the high dome of his brow. His hair is a pale shade of red, often darkened by his choice of hair-oils. The only single flaw on his face is the single spot of acid upon his forehead. He rarely hides this white spot upon his brow, or that he has a scar each upon his ear-lobes from piercing."_

"Finished yet?" Mr. Lestrade asked.

"Yes, sir." Cooper stammered, lowering the page. "It's almost exactly the description Lizzie's friends gave him."

"And how did _they_ describe him, Constable?" Lestrade's dark eyes had fastened into Cooper's face like grappling-hooks.

"W...Well, sir...they said Lizzie thought highly enough of him, but they never mentioned they were friendly."

"What a surprise there." Mr. Lestrade said without the least bit of surprise in his voice. "Go back and read that bit about the acid stain on the forehead."

Cooper did. "It says it's his only flaw, and he never hides it."

"Odd, don't you think?" Mr. Lestrade sounded tired as he got to his feet and went to the teapot. Cooper decided not to warn him about Gregson's brewing—he was better off staying out of the fight. "We've been wondering about that acid scar for some time now. Jones was complaining about Clay after you were gone. I'll spare you the bulk." Mr. Lestrade poured, sipped from the cup and only briefly paused to shiver.

"Jones found out something about Mr. Clay recently, and it isn't in the reports. He had to pay for it through the line of informers, through Langdale Pike no less-" Mr. Lestrade paused to shudder at the thought of that much money going to a news-gossip, "-but it was money well spent. Mr. Clay's acid spot wasn't _always_ an acid spot." He took another drink, grimaced, and put the cup down (Cooper was almost positive he saw the little man mouth, _"Damn it, Gregson."_)

"Clay had a sodding _birthmark_ there. One he didn't like. So he changed it. _He burnt himself with the acid and mixed up a fairy tale about his photography chemicals to explain it."_ Lestrade's mouth was set tight. "Before, it was just a small patch of white on his skin just at his hairline. Common enough of a birthmark, that lack of pigmentation."

Cooper waited, but Lestrade was waiting for him to say something. Flustered, Cooper struggled back in his mind. The conclusion came all too soon and he felt his cheeks grow cold with the shock.

"The baby's Mr. Clay's?" He asked in a tiny voice.

"Looks like it." Mr. Lestrade said in that quiet, even voice. "And if that's the case—which Jones and I believe—then we have _another_ sort of problem. What's the tie between John Clay, Lizzie Blackburn, and the _**Fox, Fowler & Co.,**_ bank?"

Cooper felt his throat tighten up. "You mean to talk to the King."

Mr. Lestrade nodded. "That'll be the easy part. We'll save that for last."

"Sir?" Cooper couldn't imagine what the hard part would be.

"We," Mr. Lestrade said slowly, "Are going to see a man about a bank."

* * *

Cooper watched as the closer they got to the _**First London Shares and Consults,**_ the more impassive grew the Inspector.

Cooper didn't like banks himself, and he knew nothing about the glorified world of stocks, bonds, shareholdings and purchases, but Mr. Lestrade's expression was freezing up a little at a time, and with it stiffened his spine and his silence. By the time they got to the door, he had all the personality of a Christmas Nutcracker: his jaws were set to snatch on something softer than himself, and crush it.

They were met at the door but not led to the proper office; Mr. Lestrade continued striding without pause, his street-battered dust coat swirling its long tails in his wake. Cooper had all he could do to keep up and maintain the proper Bobby expression of patient boredom.

Inwardly he was intimidated. The gasalier was larger than the Coburn Square water pump, shaped like a giant dragon's head and polished within an inch; there was enough brass, glass, iron and copper in the main lobby to pay an army of mudlarks up to their grandchildren's days. He wondered how many charwomen and men were paid just to clean it.

They crossed (Mr. Lestrade stamped) a Turkish carpet and ignored the comings and goings of men that were eerily alike: they all wore three piece suits of sober colours (no check or plaid); they all had waxed moustaches and combed-back hair; they were all white men, and most had spectacles or glasses perched on shining noses or swinging off chains. No Albert chains for the watches here. Cooper quailed at the thought of being surrounded by men who eschewed the styles of the Prince Consort. Deeper into the building he saw a few Indian men, one with a turban; two Eurasians and a man with olive skin and glorious beard. Two men wore the flattish Asian faces an electric ice-blue eyes of the Baltic race. They were all united in dress, glasses, and moustaches.

The women were a similar type as well. They wore enough black to satisfy a funeral party, even if the black was offset by the white collars and puffed sleeves. Hair was permitted almost any style so long as it was tied up and well out of the way. If it added to their height so much the better.

Mr. Lestrade swept them all with a gaze that held all the charm of a dormant volcano, and pulled off his hat as he approached an office set in the back. The door was open (thank God, Cooper prayed). He stopped just at the entrance-point and cleared his throat.

A disturbingly young man's face (monocled, moustachiod, and adorned like the others), popped out like a Jack-in-the-box. "Oh!" He exclaimed with an unaffected smile. "I was about to see if you'd made it in. Would you like some tea?"

_What in the devil?_ Cooper marvelled.

"None for us, thank you, Mr. Throwley." Mr. Lestrade said evenly. "We came as promptly as we could in the hopes of sparing you the rest of your work-day."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure." The man agreed and politely ignored his own teacup as he settled birdlike behind his large desk. It was nested with papers. "Anything to help such a distinguished member of the law. What may I do for you?"

"We are investigating several cases at once, for which I cannot completely go into details." Mr. Lestrade told him. "But in one of these cases we were asked to verify the authenticity of bank-notes that came from one of the companies you represent."

"Hmn." Mr. Throwley's young face was thoughtful. "Well, that is a simple enough matter." He nodded over his laced-over fingers. "If you could provide me with the numbers I would be pleased to check with our records." He tilted his head to a point behind them. "Miss Hyde, please stay for a moment. We may be in need of your assistance."

Mr Lestrade wordlessly pulled out his copy of Padriag Dooley's bank-note numbers. What Cooper thought would turn into an interminable wait was ruined in the next few seconds.

"Miss Hyde, if you would please verify these notes are still in our possession?" As soon as the young woman was gone, he turned a sharp eye upon the police. "These are, as far as I know, notes still within our possession. May I ask if your notes are safe?"

"They are currently evidence in a case." Mr. Lestrade rode over the younger man very politely.

"We are the only bank outside of our worthy rivals' permitted to issue our own notes. If this is a case of forgery it is most serious indeed."

"That is why we must assure you the notes are being kept safe. As these notes have fallen under the case of at least one potential victim of murder _and_ the affairs of a renowned counterfeiter, you understand why we would like to stay discreet as possible." Mr. Lestrade kept his hat neatly upon his lap and wasn't even moving for his notebook. "Counterfeiting tends to happen in secrecy. The Yard was assured that you would be quite discreet in protecting the interests of your Bank."

The young man rubbed his aching head. "May I at least inquire the person who gave you such a flattering assessment of my abilities?"

"That would be Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who has vouched for your "invaluable assistance in the past" and your "uncompromising honesty that is a credit to your profession.""

"You don't say!" The clerk's expression was comical in astonishment. "I thought I was a numismatic paragon of failure."

Mr. Lestrade's lips twitched. "In all due fairness, I am an imbecile, unobservant, conservative to a fault, and my only good qualities are my determination and professionalism."

Mr. Throwley blinked. "And what does he call you, Constable?"

Cooper choked inside his collar. "Nothing yet, sir."

"Haven't met, have you?"

"No, sir."

"Welcome to the club anyway. It's only a matter of time."

Cooper decided if he was ever a man of means, he would bank through _**Fox**_, just because of this man.

Mr. Lestrade had pulled out a notebook and pencil, poising both over his lap (using another man's desk would be unfathomably rude). Mr. Throwley cleared his throat. "I don't know if you would find this useful, but since you are seeking information with equal parts discretion..."

"Feel free to give us what information you can, Mr. Throwley."

"Very well. Ours is a well-renowned bank. It has a distinguished history, being in part what some of the more clever folk call "An Athena" for the Fox Brothers ." The clerk paused and sighed. "Not a day passes in which I have to explain to someone with quite a good education that it is called that because Athena was the brain-child of Zeus. This bank is considered a brain-child."

"Go on, sir."

"Fox Brothers was one of the first of England's founders into our modern wool industry. What started as a small endeavor in the mid-1770's was officially stabilised in 1772 by Thomas Fox. It is because of his and others' intelligence that the company (along with many of its peers) rose to power in Industry. If you could but name one aspect of the wool trade, they would be involved. Everything was under one roof—from the sorting of the wool, to its spinning, drying, and weaving under one roof. Naturally this accrued a large amount of capital in a very short time."

Mr. Throwley beamed as he warmed to his subject. From his rougher perspective, Cooper was reluctantly drawn in by the man's enthusiasm. He leaned forward with his elbows upon the blotting-paper, and wove his fingers into themselves as he spoke of weaving.

"The Company went on to emerge into its current state—that of an innovative and leading source of respected materials throughout the world. If I may be so bold, Mr. Lestrade, the excellent chalkstripe upon your person is one such style that was developed by the company. At any rate, chalkstripes, pinstripes, flannels, worsted woollens and felts poured out, and money poured in. In times of war we are proud that our textiles serve our serving men. Our looms continue with the same patterns as what were founded.

"Thomas Fox was fortuitous enough to marry the daughter of a London Banker, and this led to the founding of the _**Fox Bros., Fowler & Company.**_ Branch Offices were established in quick order, and it is the eventual hope that we will have more than fifty Branch Offices totalled in this country within the next twenty years." Throwley beamed with pride, as if he had personally seen to the launching of its finest projects.

Lestrade was writing shorthand as fast as the man was talking. "It does seem fairly extensive. What, if I may ask, are the areas of England and Wales lacking in access to this good bank?"

"Why, none." Throwley was startled at the notion. "Any British Citizen may find themselves within reach of the Company's assistance within no more than a half-day's travel by train." He clarified after a moment's thought: "And if we are not within convenience, we do have many hospitable partners in banking. _**The Devon and Cornwall Bank**_ for example, or _**Cox & Co.,**_ and of course, _**The Capital and Counties Bank."**__**2**_

By accident, Cooper was turning his head in the right moment to see Mr. Lestrade give a...flinch was the best word.

"I see." Mr. Lestrade stopped writing for a moment. "So far you've been most helpful, Mr. Throwley. Might I inquire as to how long you've been in service?"

"Only eight years this June." The man said proudly.

"Ah." Lestrade coughed lightly behind his hand, at a loss for speech, but the secretary returned with a sealed envelope which she passed to the clerk.

"Thank you," he said absently, split the seal, and started reading. "Forgive my manners; we keep the lists of notes above the value of 2/ on file, but sealed until we need a reference—such as now. It would seem that the notes of your number still reside in the possession of the bank. This is alarming, Mr. Lestrade. Either one set or the other is genuine, but not both."

"Exactly what we were thinking." Mr. Lestrade confessed. "I am most sorry. Can your bank discreetly determine if your notes are genuine?"

"Within the hour." The young man's face no longer looked innocently pleasant. He was insulted at the blow to his craft. "May we contact you?"

"That would be most welcome." Mr. Lestrade produced a card—a real businessman's card—and placed it courteously upon the desk so the man could pick it up at his own leisure. "We will continue to pursue our parts of the case. May we contact you if we find out something on your end?"

"Absolutely."

Still, Mr. Lestrade hesitated. "I feel I must warn you, sir. Recently a new twist in counterfeiting and forging has come to light. Perhaps you are already aware? Supplies of genuine money are mixed in with the false and only the smallest of markings alert the smasher which is which. They arrange it so that the 'sample' of money being examined is always the clean note."

"I can't say I am surprised." Was the gloomy response. "There's a proverb we use which seems to apply: "Always move your pounds sterling up...because the banks haven't any cents."

* * *

Outside of the building, Mr. Lestrade closed his eyes and breathed deep to the count of four. "Just when you think you've seen it all." He grumbled. "Right, Constable. We're earlier than I gauged, so we'll make a small detour to the madhouse on the way back to Jones."

"Sir?" Cooper stared.

"Oh, it shouldn't take long. Take comfort, Constable. You're about to join the club."

Baker Street was in the City of Whitechapel, so Cooper knew little about it. His family avoided large portions of Marylebone because their reliable sources of income didn't come from such affluent areas. Cooper shrugged at it all as London grew progressively cleaner the closer they grew to the address, but his companion grew glum and short-voiced.

"Oh, good. He's home." Mr. Lestrade sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. By this point, Cooper was girded for three different types of warfare. If one-tenth of the stories were true...

The Inspector caught his expression and read it correctly. "You've nothing to worry about, Constable." He said in a voice of iron. "He tends to ignore the Bobbies and make tea-cakes and sandwiches out of their superiors... He is a useful enough fellow or we wouldn't put up with his odd little ways." Mr. Lestrade paused long enough to take a deep breath and let it out. He did it again. "And he does have his odd little ways. Not a professional, not by a long chalk. But he has some talent for getting to the bottom of a matter even if we can't figure out how he did it half the time. Just stand and look...the way you always do. He'll most likely offer me a drink I'm not supposed to have on-duty, move it to the cigars even though they taste like his coal-scuttle, and press me for an interesting case, then he'll throw in his usual insults and he'll either be helpful, or unhelpful if we're lucky."

"And if we aren't lucky, sir?" Cooper was brash enough to ask.

"Then he'll have the whole thing solved in his head and decide not to tell us."

"Can he do that?" Cooper was horrified.

The face that looked up at him was inestimably weary.

"Your first lesson about Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be your most important one, Constable. _He does what he wants, and Heaven help anyone who tries to tell him what to do."_ The very thought made Mr. Lestrade burrow deeper into his coat, but no thickness of wool could protect him from the obvious chill that struck his marrow at the image his own words had created.

* * *

_1 _A poulterer's market. Holmes and Watson visited the Garden in CARB

_2 _Sherlock Holmes' bank. In "PRIO" he says to the Duke: "_"I fancy that I see your Grace's cheque book upon the table. If should be glad if you would make me out a cheque for six thousand pounds. It would be as well perhaps for you to cross it. The Capital and Counties Bank, Oxford Street, are my agents."_ By interesting co-incidence, it was also the bank of ACD. _Cox and Co_., of course was the bank of Watson's choice as they were the bankers for the Indian Army. _Cox & Co_., of course was the bank of Watson's choice as they were the bankers for the Indian Army.


	5. Joining the Club

Lestrade dashed out as soon as the wheels settled to the kerb and went straight to the front door, rapping with his knuckles. After a moment a nondescript woman answered the call, barely glanced at her guests, and pulled the passage open.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson and try to avoid meats at Giles' until we get a few things straightened out, please."

Cooper was left scrambling to keep up with a man who had not had the joy of running in a Bobby's full uniform in many years. The stairs were the hardest; Cooper counted seventeen of the narrow little plagues before he blessedly made it to the top, lightheaded and over-hot.

Shag tobacco smoke boiled from an open doorway with a fervor Cooper had never before seen. He dizzily thought of the terror of his childhood: a horrible, hoary old uncle who kept a pipe and blew tobacco smoke into the face of any child foolish enough to get within arm's length. This wall of smoke made him wonder for a crazed moment if the old sinner had come back to life.

And Lestrade was marching through it with the stoic demeanor of a fire-fighter walking into a blazing room because his duty compelled no less. Cooper held his breath and gamely followed.

The rooms were doubtless nice enough under the stacks of books that filled up the space the smoke did not, but Cooper's watering, air-starved eyes could see precious little of the room because of the said books.

They were everywhere.

Large books; books that fit in the palm of your hand. Books even smaller than the tiny Children's Bible he'd seen peeking out of Lestrade's pocket. Giant atlases, gilt-edged dictionaries, books with pages that created marbled patterns on the sides when the light struck them; leatherbound monsters; cheap pasteboard dwarfs. Books wrapped in canvas. A stack of yellow-backed seafaring novels were the neatest collection of all. They seem to be kept nicely and off the floor, but everything else was all helter-skelter.

The books made hills, mountains and Mayan pyramids. They made ziggurats and lumps and stretched almost to the smoke-stained ceiling. They propped up a chemistry table, held a window open to the whistling breeze, and pressed dangerously close to the fireplace. A low sofa groaned under the weight of a complete set of books in French. A guide to Central France hung limply over the back—clearly fallen where it had been carelessly tossed.

There was only just enough carpet to walk on, if one didn't mind threading snakelike around books, furniture, and a standing lamp. It would also help if one was in possession of very long and lean legs, for stepping over _more_ books.

Mr. Lestrade was not overly blessed with height. He sighed with his hands on his hips and looked about him several times. Cooper kept to the doorway with his hands neatly behind his back.

"Well." Mr. Lestrade commented. "Been spring cleaning a bit, have we?"

A long, white hand emerged from the smoke and waved languidly. "Constructive use of one's time is the only reliable combatant against boredom."

The voice was well-bred, and each word stood alone in precision; never did one word blend into another. PC Comer swore he'd seen Mr. Holmes on stage as Shakespeare once, disguised in full costume with an old green skull in hand. All of a sudden, Cooper entertained the possibility that Comer _hadn't_ been drunk at the time.

"I couldn't agree more, Mr. Holmes." A circus performer could have easily balanced a sword on the level edge of Mr. Lestrade's voice. "If you're too busy for a few questions I can always come back at another time..."

"You may as well state your business, Lestrade. Another trip would be a waste of the Yard's valuable time. There is whiskey and soda upon the board, and cigars on the mantle."

Cooper wondered if this was what the Chief Inspector called 'facetiousness'.

"Too true, Mr. Holmes, but thank you. I've...had plenty of tobacco for the day." Mr. Lestrade was keeping his hat firmly in his hand and very slowly waving it back and forth in an attempt to guide at least one of the looming fog-banks out the window and into the street. As he spoke, Cooper made out the owner of the long hand. Hard as it was to believe, the smoke was dissipating by inches. It was a long, lean body with hair as black and shining as polished jet, with a long, hawkish face with the bones never far below the pale skin. The nose was as proud as the chin was strong and the brow, lofty. A mouse-coloured dressing gown helped to mask his form beneath the thick air of the room.

"It's a trifling matter, I believe, and yet we can come to no answers on our own." Mr. Lestrade coughed lightly. "We need a piece of paper identified."

"A paper identified?" Holmes repeated with a bored-sounding little sniff. "Forgery again, Lestrade?"

"I would hope to never see another case of forgery in my entire life, Mr. Holmes, but no. I'm trying to find the origin of a sheet of paper. Since you seem to be clever enough to identify all the hotels just by their papers..."

Holmes almost smirked, but the action would have placed his pipe in jeopardy. Cooper wondered if he was burning peat in the bowl.

"...And adding to the complication of the case, I don't have the paper in question, nor can I bring it to you. I can only describe it for I did see it with my own two eyes."

"You've seen papers before and managed to miss stupendously vital clues, Lestrade." Holmes let his eyes close and waved impatiently. "Well, let us "see."" He had the face of a man faced with a needlessly sloppy problem.

"The paper was almost perfectly square with a pale yellow tint almost the same colour as the milk off a Guernsey. It was square because it was trimmed—the edges had been torn off by pressing something sharp down, like a metal ruler. There were no water-marks or stationary stamps that we could see. It was soft to the touch, almost like a well-used pound note is soft. When it was held up to the light it had an odd...grain to it, almost like the grain of wood."

Holmes' eyes had been closed until this point, but abruptly flipped open. "How did it weigh?"

"It would have been heavier than typing paper, but not as heavy as that stationary we get from the Home Office. Oh...and it was slippery." Mr. Lestrade made a face as he recalled one last fact.

"That would most likely be the stationary used by the non-suite occupants of the Havering." Holmes spoke with alarming speed. "There was no water-mark upon the paper because the sheet you saw is used to make envelopes for the Hotel correspondance. The secretaries personally hand-fold and seal the letters as a personal guarantee against spies. The better paying rooms have a separate stationary of a pale blue. It tends to cause some trouble with the Foreign Office as it is almost the same shade of blue for the envelopes they keep for their intra-governmental _communiques_."

Mr. Lestrade had the look of a man fighting a headache. It could be the overwhelming information, but it was just likely all the smoke.

Mr. Holmes had not finished talking.

"The slippery quality of the paper is something you should have mentioned from the first, Lestrade. It is created by the use of clays upon the manufacturing process. That allows the ink to go further upon the paper, and the ink takes on a more expensive appearance for it remains dense upon the surface instead of soaking through the fibres, but it also makes the paper less acceptable for the paper-makers as they cannot re-use scraps and oddments to make more paper and reduce the cost of waste. The papers are limited in their purchase."

"I see." Mr. Lestrade said in that same tone of voice.

"Is that really all that confounded you? Even for you, Lestrade, this is pedestrian."

"Not entirely." Mr. Lestrade reached into his coat and pulled out a thick envelope, sealed with blue wax. "You asked for this, I believe?"

For a brief moment, those grey eyes sparked with...something. Cooper thought of a child offered a sweet, but it wasn't that joyous. More of a hungry child invited in to sit and eat the family roast. Long and pale fingers took up the paper with a snapping swiftness.

"Excellent! And do give my respects to Mr. Sextus. Your timing is fortuitous; I leave for France on the morrow for one of their petty little problems. Still, it will take up some of my attention and energies... ...Well, Constable? Do you have any questions?"

Cooper jumped half a mile in his heavy coat. Holmes was looking at him with a funny little twist to his lip. Mr. Lestrade only looked resigned and on the verge of apology...or like he was hoping to protect him from the madman lying on the couch.

"Sir, no, sir. I can't say I have any questions."

"You were paying a great deal of attention upon my hands just now."

"Merely comparing them, sir."

"Oh?" An almost-smile flitted across that lean face like a moth. The entire body moved, smoothly oiled as a snake as the consultant slipped to an upright position with his slippered feet suddenly (and soundlessly) upon the floor. "Comparing them to what, if I may inquire?"

"Mr. Jones, sir. His are larger, but yours look stronger."

"Mr. Holmes," Mr. Lestrade sounded as though the last scrap of his patience was dissolving under the carbolic atmosphere of the room.

"As far as I know, Mr. Jones has the largest hands of anyone on the Force." Holmes ignored Mr. Lestrade and picked up two white walnuts from a glass bowl at his elbow. "And that may be true; he rarely uses them for strength as the rest of him does well enough in combat." Those grey-lit eyes were still on Cooper. "As opposed to myself." The hand clenched. Cooper heard cracking, and the hand opened. Shells fell into the bowl.

Mr. Holmes looked at Lestrade. "One may hope the Yard continues to show initiative in recruiting their newcomers, Lestrade. Now if you haven't any further trifles, I must pursue one of my own."

* * *

"Forget it, Constable. It's not coming out."

Cooper gave up trying to air the cab and leaned back. The shag was still in their clothes.

Lestrade read his expression correctly. "Be glad you're not married." He told the young man. "I keep a spare suit in my office for days like this."

"Oh, no." Cooper said without thinking. "The washers charge extra for getting the smells out."

"You're better off going to your own laundress." Mr. Lestrade advised. "Give them a bottle of potato-vodka and tell them to throw two cups in with the wash. Takes it right out." He shook his head. "Don't listen to them when they say vinegar. I've tried vinegar. Mr. Holmes is a one-man smokestack." He rolled his eyes and leaned back. "Welcome to the club, Constable."

"Ah, thank you, sir."

"You got off rather light; he must've liked you."

Cooper hoped this was Mr. Lestrade's idea of teasing. "I don't know, sir. Was that a trick with the walnuts?"

"Yes and no. He was using his fingers to crush one of the nuts against the other; the other was braced in the heel of his hand. It looks like raw power, doesn't it? But it takes concentration, balance, and muscle control as well as strength. Most people don't have it." Mr. Lestrade flexed his own fingers. "Mr. Holmes is a skinny crane of a man, but you wouldn't want to ever get into a fight against him. He's got a left that can put out men four times his size—I've seen it with my own two eyes."

"He boxes?" Cooper was astonished. Boxing was not a gentleman's sport.

"Boxes, singlesticks, fencing, some foreign styles I've never heard of...but he has a taste for boxing. Says it's like chess, whatever _that_ means." Lestrade shrugged helplessly, baffled. "But he's willing to learn from anyone who wants to teach him. Not that it takes him long to figure out what the training's all about. That bit with the walnuts? The best fighting instructors use to see if their students have what it takes.

"Not my style, really." He shrugged. "I prefer not to use my hands if I can help it. I need them for things." He looked down at his notebook, opened it, and read over his small letters with an absent frown. "We've got just enough time for Jones. The more we finish today, the less we'll have to do tomorrow morning."

Cooper remembered what Bradstreet had said about cases. He wondered how many Mr. Lestrade had on his desk, waiting to be solved but held back until he could return. He felt very badly for it even though he was following orders and no one, least of all Mr. Lestrade, would want him to do less.

Still, he wasn't pleased with himself. It was hard enough to adapt on his life as a Bobby, but he was a bachelor without even a sweet-heart. He went home to the dormitories at night and ate in the cafeteria. Mr. Lestrade was one of the married ones. He had more money, but he had more expenses, and he had people who expected him home at night. It wasn't one of the things he liked about his Da being a copper, but they all understood.

Policing was a bloody disgusting job more often than not.

"Not to quote our funny friend, but you look as though there's another question lurking in your brain, Constable."

Cooper jumped slightly, caught out. "It just struck me as peculiar, sir...that he cracked a nut open and didn't eat it." Even a single walnut was a relished treat at the Square, for the young and old alike.

"He forgets to eat."

Cooper was utterly flummoxed, poleaxed, and gobsmacked. How could anyone forget to eat?

The small man smiled at him, knowing what his expression meant. "He does, I tell you. It's got to be why he's such a skeleton. He's got a brother who's anything _but_ scrawney bones. But yes, I've seen him simply wander off in his mind..." Mr. Lestrade tapped his forehead and then made walking motions across the air with his fingers. "Forget to finish the food set at his own table. The poor landlady earns every penny of her rent."

"He...forgets to eat. Sir." Cooper wanted to be sure he understood.

"I can't tell you anything more except...I think it's awful busy in there." Mr. Lestrade tapped his forehead. "Busy like a swarm of bees, I think. Sometimes you have to get his attention through the swarm."

* * *

Jones was sideways in his chair (he was too big for it), in the '_**Keg**_ with two waiting ciders. Cooper remembered finding Mr. Lestrade with two ciders himself at this same establishment, even the same table. He guessed Jones had been the cancellation.

"I'm ordering another round, Jones." Mr. Lestrade lifted his hand in the air and made a dance with three fingers. Duty done, he sank back to the booth and stretched his feet out. "Have mine, Constable. Jones is going to buy me the hard stuff when he finds out what I've been up to on his behalf."

"You act as though you've never had a case interlock with another's." Jones told him. He leaned close and made a point of sniffing loudly. "Look at you," he disapproved. "Coming back reekin' of the Baker Street Smoke Machine, and that look in your eye may as well give it all away. Learn anything new other than your consistently low assessment kept by Mr. Holmes?"

Mr. Lestrade ground his teeth. Cooper knew this despite the fact that the man had his lips shut, because of the gristmill-gears sound escaping those lips. "You wanted me to tell you if anything so much as mentioned a "Ghost of Cornwall.""

"And?"

"We checked our bank's broker. He mentioned one of their partners being _**the Devon and Cornwall Banking Company.**_ That's in Plymouth." The two men shared a long look at each other, but Cooper was damned if he knew what Plymouth had to do with Devon or Cornwall, other than the three addresses were unlikely to serve a decent beefsteak, and forget a decent rye liquor.

"That's better than my lead." The bigger man admitted. "I was trying to find a link between John Clay and the _**Penzance Savings Bank**_, but all I got were a lot of bloody jokes about pirates and Gilbert and Sullivan!"

Lestrade laughed so hard he had to hold his sides. Every time he tried to stop he'd see the annoyed, red face of Jones and start laughing all over again. Jones' beetroot frustration ebbed and flowed with Lestrade's hilarity.

"So nice someone can find something amusing about _Cornwall_." He said to Cooper.

"Yes, sir." Cooper said meekly.

Jones waited until Lestrade was close to recovering his breath and cleared his throat. Without a single bat of his eye or a crack of a smile, he began reciting in a dull Constable Plod's monotone: _"With Cat-Like Tread / Upon our prey we steal..."_

"OhvnstopptJonz!" Lestrade gasped for air. "Icnbrthe!"

"_So stealthily the pirate creeps / While all the household soundly sleeps..."_ Jones didn't let up for a second.

"_Tarantara, tarantara..."_ Cooper chipped in for the part of the policemen, simply because the urge to do so was as overwhelming as his curiosity to Lestrade's reaction. He never claimed to be perfect. He was a costermonger.

"Aren't you a cheeky one?" Jones regarded him thoughtfully as Lestrade collapsed between them.

"No, sir, just Cockney."

"Oh, well, that's all right then." Jones said comfortably. "If you didn't get all clever with your mouth once in a while we'd have to worry about your health." He pulled out a cigarette-case. "Care to add to another layer on your suit?" He asked. "This smells much better than that stuff Holmes smokes."

"I...thank you, sir..?"

"I'm not magic, lad. We all know what happens when we go there and Mr. Holmes is in one of his queer moods. Should have been there when the doctor was sharing the rent." Jones lit up and they shared the tiny flame. "_He_ smoked 'Ship's, and when you had the two of _that_ boilin' about the room, it was a sight to behold. My laundress used words that shouldn't exist."

Cooper glanced down at the chair between them. "Will he be all right, d'you think?"

"Oh, yes. He's just cleaning his nerves out. Sherlock Holmes is a quizzacious1 gent and can scrape your pride off his shoes and into the street on any day, but on top of this case? This _is_ a nasty case. I dealt with mine by joining a ruckus on Fourth and Bridgeway earlier. Knocked a few heads together and was right as rain." Jones sighed, contented by memories. He caught on to Cooper's expression.

"This only _looks_ like a pesty case, lad. Forgery and counterfeiting is a lot worse than they'll tell you in your training. They only recently ended the laws that hung counterfeiters and forgers and even the smashers. I'm not always sure they should have done so, because even though the little fish are little, those big fish are guilty of murder _every time._"

Jones blew a smoke ring before the shocked youth. "Every time." He repeated. "They put in money—real money—that could build a hospital from the ground up for their presses and equipment and molds and stamps. They'll kill over that much money. I've seen them do it. And they're the hardest of the lot to catch. Parasites all."

Lestrade had recovered. He was flushed but considerably calmer. "They're monsters, I agree." He said. "Even if we can link them to young Lizzie's death it won't pay for the five or six other deaths John Clay is responsible for taking."

Cooper felt ill. "He's killed so many, sirs?"

"We can't prove it, but yes." Jones was grim. "And that's the ones we know about."

"To be clear about it," Mr. Lestrade was calm again, but looked worn out. "The lives he's taken directly and personally. There's no knowing how many people he's driven to death, but thank God for British Law. When She finally catches up with her prey..." Mr. Lestrade looked at Jones' large hands, which were slowly grasping like lobster's claws about an invisible neck.

The others nodded. If someone died of unnatural causes, Britain held the cause responsible. This made it difficult for blackmailers to avoid the death sentence if their actions were proved to drive the victim to self-murder...but at the same time, led to some creative forms of social justice. The Black Museums were the easiest example.2

* * *

The next round came. Mr. Lestrade drank one, passing the others their third. "Going back to my problem, Mr. Holmes helped identify the paper—at least he believed he knew where it came—that being the Haverton." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Any clues to that? All I can think of is its use as a hotel for the important people who come in on Government work."

Jones muddled it over, his face black with thought. Without warning he brightened. "I think it does!" He said slowly. "That's not just the best hotel in Central London. It rents out several businesses that caters to the government _from the outside._ Two different courier agencies, a transfer office for the ambassadors who need to convert their native money for England, a postal office..and a telegraph office. It's built like a concrete clipper—all elegance and strength. Whoever lives there doesn't have to ever leave it if they're doing work for their government. You can buy anything from a French billet to Lyons, to a handful of Russian postage stamps."

"A shopping market for government lackeys and foreign guests? You don't bloody say." Mr. Lestrade drew designs in the dew of his mug with a fingertip. "I was there once, _years_ ago when they were still building it."

"I doubt most of _us_ have ever been inside it." Jones nodded slowly, up and down. "Government, you know. It runs better without the likes of us in it." He took another swallow to underscore the truth of this statement. "Makes you wonder how the likes of Mr. Holmes knows about it. It took me a few years to get that deep."

"I'm more worried at his queer behaviour. He was dropping hints on what he was doing elsewhere, Jones. He's a daft one, but he's never done that before."

"Don't follow yuh, Lamps."

"If he tells you what he's on about, it's because he wants you to know he's doing something much more important than your silly little work-cases. But there he was, dropping bits and bobs right and left about France. What the devil would an Englishman do in France, anyway?"

"Catch a disease?" Jones guessed with no intelligence.

"Aren't you the clever wag." Lestrade showed his teeth when he was really angry. "You adle-pated barmpot. You're a dear friend and I can't imagine the world without you in it, but one of these days, you'll have to admit that France is just a little bit **important** to the Crown."

"If you say so, Lamps."

"Oh, damn it all..."

"A gentleman doesn't swear."

"And you felt obligated to tell me this why?"

* * *

Cooper had his head down, concentrating on his drink and was ignoring the degenerating conversation with a skill that impressed the rest of the 'Keg. If only they knew he'd spent three of his young years directly above a fire-station's address. Puffs and clatter couldn't possibly impress anyone after that experience...

Inwardly he was suffering a serious rotation of the axis upon his brain. Revelatory thoughts had that effect.

It had finally occurred to him that in the few but brief visits to the '_**Keg**_, something important had happened. He had been left alone. This was not a normal occurrence. In his own pub—yes. Yes, absolutely. But in another's tavern? Never.

Either the _**'Keg**_ was giving him courtesy because of his company (the clear patrons being Lestrade and Jones), or...

...or word had gotten out that Pacer Cooper's son was in the Force.

Cooper wasn't sure what to think about either possibility, but the solid fact was...they were at peace here. No barmaids, no tenders, no servers. No one had come to the table demanding their time and efforts. It was...nice.

The quiet soaked through his pores until at some point he looked up.

The Inspectors were watching him politely, waiting for his notice.

"Oh. I beg your pardon, sirs. I'm sorry, sirs."

Mr. Lestrade lifted his fingers off the table, dismissing the apology. "Tomorrow's your day off, isn't it? Do you want to go ahead and take that time, or do another day's work and have that added to another fortnight?"

Cooper thought about it. The notion of two days off in a row sounded deliciously scandalous. There was also the fact that his work had suddenly grown easier; he was in an interesting case; the Square was finally beginning to give him some small amount of respect.

His instincts were to jump into the "yes" but that wasn't just up to him.

"I'll know by eight, sir."

"Make it nine." Mr. Lestrade never turned a hair. "I'll be out until nine and in my office at half-past. If I don't see you, I'll assume you're on your day."

"Are you still plannin' to talk to the Pearly King?" Jones wanted to know.

Mr. Lestrade swallowed a mouthful of cider before responding. "I don't know all the facts yet. But I do know, we need to speak with the man who saddled us all with this priceless mess in the first place." He took another drink. "There's also the Tinker King, and I'll have to talk to him very soon."

* * *

It was late when Cooper staggered into the streets. The fogs were thick as pease porridge to the point that even the street-lamps did little more than lighten up the slimy yellow air in the soft hiss of a thousand city-flames.

Cooper felt safer when the fogs were at their worst. You had less chance of being garroted or shived like the holiday ham on these nights. If it was too soupy to see, the average bastard wouldn't be out. Even a Bobby wasn't safe. If you were out, you were desperate.

He made his steps not to the barracks, but to home. The bells had tolled; he was now off duty until midnight of the next day. One foot passed the other, to be repeated in the opposite. The city of millions was hushed and silent. The air was just too much. Cooper walked slowly. When the air was like this, you had to be careful that you weren't stepping on something you shouldn't: rubbish and sewage tossed out of the poorest buildings when no one was looking; dead animals...broken glass bottles or twists of metal...and of course people. Dead or drunk or too weak to move. London was never truly empty.

His mother's lamp burned in the little window off the street. She lived on the ground floor and that always bothered him, for thieves found that easier than other floors. She always said if a building was on fire she wouldn't want to jump out a window.

She was waiting for him to come home.

Cooper smiled to himself as he pulled his house-key out of his pocket. Behind him he heard a familiar jingle and rattle coming up the streets: His brother Gansler, pulling his precious coffee-urn in a barrow behind him. And knowing Gansler, his equally treasured if far-uglier guard dog was trotting behind him, all teeth and hackles. The mutt was the biggest reason why his brother could walk the worst streets without harm—a big black brute with an ancestry that made him slobber as though he had the hydrophobia.

They'd settle down by the table, all four, and talk a bit before bed...but mostly they would just sit and enjoy each other's presence. Live with a person you loved one day or one hundred-thousand, it was still precious one day at a time.

* * *

1Mocking; satirical. A Victorian word that says it all.

2A Black Museum was a Museum in which the exhibits had only one thing in common: They were objects responsible for human death and that included more than implements used in murder from human to human: A horse-shoe thrown off a horse that split a man's head open on impact; a letter opener that the owner used to accidentally cut a vein; a jar that fell on someone's head, and etc. They were popular and the public gladly paid admission to see these objects of death—often they were used as a caution to the heedless!


End file.
